Apprenticeships and higher education: …

good sound-bites, bad policy making

Published by LSN www.lsnlearning.org.uk

Recently, apprenticeships seem to have been touted as the silver bullet in education, a panacea that will do everything from preventing a “lost generation” of unemployed young people to driving up UK productivity by creating a highlyskilled technician class. The Coalition Government, like the previous Labour administration, has often mentioned apprenticeships and higher education in the same breath, as alternative but equally valuable routes bringing returns for learners, employers and the economy.

In one sense mentioning higher education and apprenticeships in the same breath is helpful, demonstrating that there are indeed different roads to creating a high-skill, high-value economy for the 21st century. However, such comparisons make for good sound-bites but can result in bad and unrealistic policy making. The Coalition Government is seeking to create a large-scale apprenticeship system alongside a large-scale higher education system. Currently, however, there is a lack of clarity over their specific aims and public comparisons add to this confusion.

For example, sometimes apprenticeships and higher education are mentioned almost as equals when, for instance, policy-makers want all young people to “enter higher education or apprenticeships”. On other occasions they are mentioned as competitors such as when policy-makers conclude there are for example, too many HE students and not enough apprentices, or that apprenticeships should be expanded but HE places should be cut. Adult apprenticeships have even been obliquely referred to as an alternative to HE.

Despite this rhetoric there are critical differences between the content and delivery of apprenticeships and higher education, as well as issues of value for money for the taxpayer, actual qualification levels, and the mode of provision in terms of full-time or part-time attendance. Equally, there are thorny issues of progression between apprenticeships and higher education, and the problem of parity of esteem between graduates and qualified apprentices.

This paper seeks to dispel some of the myths around apprenticeships and higher education by illustrating these critical differences, and how they can best complement each other.

Full report (PDF 16pp)

If, like me, you prefer reading in hard copy rather than on the screen then I would urge you to get GreenPrint or a similar program which allows you to cut out images and, indeed, whole pages if the text is not relevant.

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