UK Announces Hybrid Work/Study Undergraduate Program To Fill Digital Gap

An anonymous reader writes The UK's Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey today revealed a new scheme where undergraduates will be able to avoid student fees and student loans by working for companies for three years whilst simultaneously undertaking academic studies with participating universities, resulting in a degree at the end of their successful involvement in the scheme. The British government will fund two-thirds of the cost of tuition and the host employer the remainder. The "Digital Apprenticeship" scheme will remunerate students at an unspecified level of pay, and though details are currently sketchy, is reported to obviate the need for student loans. The initiative is targeting the skills gap in the digital sector, particularly in the field of web-development and technical analysis.

Comments

This is an "excellent" idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It will flood the market with labor, helping lower labor costs for those tech businesses.

2. It will possibly detract from being a well-rounded student. So all the things about being a good citizen and such will be out the door, allowing you to be manipulated a lot easier.

3. Please feel free to mod me down if you disagree.

Serfdom

[Freshly Exhumed]

This is harmful to critical thinking and objectivity when a researcher is indebted (literally or otherwise) to any corporate entity.

I'm torn

[NoMaster]

On the one hand, this recognises the reality that the vast majority of what's called "IT" is really at a skilled trade level (not dissing trades or tradespeople; I was a tradesman for many years and now consider myself as an 'academic tradesman').

On the other hand, it's likely to open the door to even more half-interested people wandering through a half-arsed degree just to get some 'qualifications'...

skills gap is a myth

[ihtoit]

what's not a myth is the pay gap. Pay people what they're WORTH not what the Law says you can get away with. Cunts.

Re:skills gap is a myth

[Anonymous Coward]

You prefer to offer jobs to unskilled cuntlickers, do you? After all, it's the attitude that counts! Cunt.

Could be a good idea..

[jcr]

I learned to write C code by writing code, sitting in an office between two experts, one of whom later sat on the original ANSI C committee that defined the standard. I made mistakes, they told me what I did wrong, and I learned. Based on what I've seen from kids coming out of college, their instructors appear to have been people who couldn't make it as software developers.

-jcr

Re:Could be a good idea..

[cascadingstylesheet]

One of my favourite interview questions is "What's your favourite data structure, and why?", and when they answer, I ask "How would you implement it?"

"Favorite"?

Data structures are tools. I don't really have affection for any particular one. It depends on what I need them for.

And does the job require implementing one (assuming you are using that word the way I think that you are)? Or does it involve using them, in service of business goals?

Re:Another way to get cheap labour

[bigalzzz]

It's also about people learning useful skills. Lots of universities are teaching web design using dreamweaver! The university curriculums are too slow to reflect the latest tech in an industry that changes completely every year. It might not be the perfect solution with regards to pay, but it's certainly a step towards graduates coming out of uni with useful skills.

Re:Another way to get cheap labour

[MrMickS]

It's also about people learning useful skills. Lots of universities are teaching web design using dreamweaver! The university curriculums are too slow to reflect the latest tech in an industry that changes completely every year. It might not be the perfect solution with regards to pay, but it's certainly a step towards graduates coming out of uni with useful skills.

It doesn't matter what tools are used, I still craft web pages in a text editor. A CS degree shouldn't be thought of as providing the graduate with knowledge about how to use the latest toolsets. It should provide them with the answer to "why" rather than necessarily the "how".

Re:Why the subsidy?

[Half-pint HAL]

I'm struggling to understand why this particular group of students should have such a heavily government subsidised education when they claim they can't afford it for the rest of us..

Isn't it obvious? We've got a general election in 6 months, and the guys currently in charge want to still be in charge in a year's time, so they want to be seen as the guys who did something to address the problem of unaffordable tuition fees, instead of the guys who caused the problem within months of the last election.

As for why computers, it's simply a way to give their regressive, exclusionist tactics an illusion of "progressivity". This is "real world" stuff rather than "ivory towers", so it's "economy". Yay for the world's oldest democracy.