On the first Sunday in July, Ipswich runs a free music festival at Christchurch Park.
It’s a great experience for Ipswich – it’s one of few times in a year where the town is full and busy.
Anyone from an Ipswich secondary school will likely have fond memories – meeting their friends on Hippie Hill – seeing multiple people you know all at once, getting into mosh pits, going on the Booster. The list goes on.
But despite my advocacy for Ipswich, I once found myself anxious to attend. Earlier in my apprenticeship, I had difficult experiences at work with a frequent performer at this festival.
This is something which, nearly six years after the ordeal ended, I am still coming to terms with.
Something which has helped me a great deal is the idea of exposure therapy. This is the act of revisiting certain ideas and places from a new reference point.
The intent is that it neutralises any bad associations with an idea or place by creating new associations. Over time, more neutral or even good experiences will outnumber the bad ones.
It’s like treating grief as a ball in a jar, where the jar grows around the ball over time. The pain is still there when the ball hits the jar, though the ball is much less likely to hit the expanding insides of the jar.
Along these lines, I approached the 2024 Ipswich Music Day with a fresh perspective. Seeing the band in the programme made me reflect on the rhetoric around being an apprentice and how it’s positioned alongside other options.
No alternative
I would argue that apprenticeships are not an alternative to university, at least not in all cases. Whilst it is a clear-cut alternative in some cases, such as advanced apprenticeships, it is more complex for Higher and Degree apprenticeships.
In these cases, it is debatable – on the one hand, these apprentices can attain qualifications at the equivalent level of a degree without attending a university.
In others, such as in my own personal experience, going to university was a core part of my experience – my qualification was a degree accredited by a university.
Gaining an academic education is what drew me to my degree apprenticeship, along with the opportunity to meet other students and experience (and create) a stimulating academic environment with them.
The difference in my case was that I wanted to apply what I had learned much more immediately and meaningfully – doing this would allow the knowledge to be retained more easily for me.
Maybe my experience is not universal – I can’t claim to know what other students’ experience has been like.
Nevertheless, I did my best to gain a fulfilling student experience, which was easier to achieve when I lived locally.
Whilst I did attend the university Film Society and meet up with friends, I did not have the “full” experience – I wasn’t living away from home, and I didn’t have as much free time to study and discover my interests. This is because much of the free time was consumed by a full-time job.
On paper, it does appear to be mostly work with some study release thrown in. This only accounts for the official contact hours, respectively from the employer and the university. To do well as a degree apprentice, you need to be willing to invest time in serious, self-paced academic study outside of the allotted contact hours. From my experience, this was as much as the time I spent at work.
If people who have chosen these options with the express intention of not going to university realise that they have to go to one, then they’re going to dislike the experience or drop out altogether.
Therefore, a contradiction presents itself:
Why is an option promoted as an “alternative to university” when half of it involves going to university?
The common resolution to this contradiction for policymakers and marketers is to just diminish or hide the role of the university as much as possible.
Then, the purpose of the apprenticeship is perceived as solely a means of gaining employment, rather than for its educational merit – university, within this paradigm, is viewed as a distraction or an obstacle to be traversed in order to accomplish solely career-focussed success
But the problem with the approach is disengagement, both socially and academically.
Making the most of it
For me, making the most of the educational aspects of the apprenticeship is as important as making the most of the position of employment.
The goal of an apprenticeship is to start from nothing and to gain experience in a given domain – my own experience shows that the creation of a virtuous cycle of learning is essential in gaining this experience:
The root of the contradiction is a separation between the experience of studying for a degree and the other aspects of university education. These other aspects are often overlooked, of which I have some first-hand experience.
When I have made genuine efforts to engage with every aspect of the experience, I am told that I should have gone to university full-time or that I am spending too much time focussed on academics at the expense of my professional work.
Seeing the band in the Ipswich Music Day programme made me reflect on an approach to resolve the contradiction of promoting degree apprenticeships to people who don’t want to go to university. This solution arguably comes from a change in definitions.
The band defines itself on their website as being “alt-rock”. Alternative rock is a broad genre of rock defined by the fact it is influenced from a diversity of independent music genres.
It is defined as an alternative to forms of rock that were becoming mainstream, such as arena rock – it is a different approach to the common genre of rock. Alt rock is not an alternative to rock as a whole – jazz and classical music are not considered “Alt Rock” for this reason.
We can see that alt-rock doesn’t describe a genre separate from rock. Its approach is different, with alt-rock defining a range of heterophonic subgenres.
Likewise, it can be argued that we should consider arguing for “alt-uni”. This terminology would reflect the fact that degree apprenticeships are alternative to the mainstream of full-time university education, but are not an alternative to university as a whole.
It’s still uni
Arguably, degree apprentices bring a range of learning approaches and knowledge to universities, such as through their professional training.
When I have previously suggested this idea, some argued that “alt-degree” would be a better term, as it focuses on the approach to the degree rather than the university.
But I believe the approach to a degree should be the same for all students, and this expectation contributes to the challenges of completing a degree apprenticeship.
The definition of what this alternative approach would constitute may vary amongst apprentices. Some debate is definitely due, though I would say that the following are important to the definition of alt-uni:
- Every second of university experience matters – an apprenticeship is finite, and we have less time than full-time students. This means careful evaluation of the experience to get the best outcome, academically and socially
- We can immediately and meaningfully apply both academic and professional work to improve the world
- There is the need to establish new precedents over accommodation, socialisation and engagement with university [youth] culture
- We can provide positive role models for studentship unencumbered by student debt, as a means of encouraging the reduction of student debt to ensure that the best options are available for all types of student
- We approach university similarly to students on scholarship. We have effectively been given a scholarship that covers our full loans. I would argue that apprenticeships should seek scholars across the university to inspire each other
- We cannot socialise as much as other students, but socialisation with them is valuable. This is especially true for apprentices of school-leaver age
Degree apprenticeships are not an alternative to university when a university education is involved.
Instead, just as alt-rock is not an alternative to rock, they should be conceived as an alternative approach to university (“alt-uni”).
This approach necessarily requires intentionality, balancing a university life with professional work. Done right, it will create a more inclusive, experience-rich education that values both theory and practice.
