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

Why the subsidy?

[GoddersUK]

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. Presumably this scheme, in its current form, will never be funded enough to accommodate a substantial proportion of the UK's students.

Don't get me wrong - I fully understand why this scheme may be good from an educational perspective and I think encouraging employers to invest in the education of the next generation of their staff is a good thing, but I don't understand why this apparently needs the remainder funded by government rather than by the student loans system? Surely it would be better to encourage companies to contribute to the education of any students in relevant fields rather than just this special group? Especially as this would have the effect of reducing pressure on the student loans system (which, for many loans, the tax payer will end up coughing up for when the student finds their degree in tourism from the University of Dudley is actually completely worthless). Not only would it be beneficial for employers, students and the taxpayer it would hopefully help weed out all the non-courses, non-universities and students that probably should be following a career path other than university, that are currently subsidised at taxpayers' expense by the SLC, because no company would pay towards the costs of such a student taking such a course at such a university.

Re:Could be a good idea..

[Dr_Barnowl]

It boggles the mind, doesn't it.

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?"

For something like 80% of the candidates I've interviewed, the answer is usually "erm...."

The vast majority of the remainder say "ArrayList" but don't usually say why.

Out of those, I've only interviewed one who could give any kind of basic indication that they knew how to implement one.

The state of the industry is shocking.

Re:I'm torn

[pr0nbot]

I disagree. Churning out a Wordpress brochure site requires some non-zero level of IT skills, but it's not the same level as, say, designing a data processing algorithm to run on MapReduce.

Re:This is an "excellent" idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

You study your subject, and that's it.

Yeah, that's what a degree program is. The minor system was invented in the US in 1910, 700 years after the formation of Cambridge and Oxford Universities. It's not a universal aspect of higher education, in fact it's rather unusual.

Which has its downsides.

You don't mention what the downsides are of going to university in order to study a subject, and then studying that subject? I can however think of several downsides to not focusing on the subject you're there for - especially if you're paying fees to be there - and of having government interference in the setting of degree requirements.

The UK doesn't do liberal arts education

On the contrary, if you want to study History, you can study History. But generally the time for mandatory curricula ends when one leaves high-school. University students are adults, not children.

Re:Another way to get cheap labour

[Half-pint HAL]

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.

And yet this is actually the industry's fault -- for two decades, they've been complaining that universities aren't teaching practical tools that have commercial use. As soon as a university tries to fill that demand, they find that whatever tool they're using is the "wrong" one, and they've drained a lot of value out of the curriculum by teaching vendor-specific rather than generalisable skills. The industry should stop trying to tell unis what to teach, and be prepared to put new grads through additional tools-specific training.

What happens if you just make 'em work

[rsilvergun]

Nellie keeps doing her job and the Apprentice gets their work. If the Apprentice can't keep up you fire them for incompetence and suddenly they have $20k in tuition bills for what they've used so far (gotta make sure if they get lazy they pay it all back, after all we can't give stuff away for free). Suddenly the dynamics change. The Student will work 60, 70, 80 hours a week because if he doesn't perform they're on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars plus no degree. It's kinda like what they do with H1-Bs. It puts the employer in a tremendous position of power which history tells us they'll abuse.