Life As a Degree Apprentice.
Before writing this post, I thought about the timeframe I would cover, it quickly went from a day to a week to a month and rolled into the life of degree apprentice. There is a lot of things I wanted to cover and to do that I had to go to this bird’s eye view but don’t worry I have kept it to the point (I think, sometimes I ramble). By the end of this I hope you get a good insight into what life is like as a degree apprenticeship and if have any questions I am happy to chat!
Apprenticeship Layout
So, I study at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) as part of the Digital and Technical Solutions Degree Apprenticeship scheme. This is a 4-year degree and one day a week I go to uni (this year a Thursday) to take lectures and the other working days I’m in the office. My degree is in Software Engineering (SE), and this is called your ‘Chosen Pathway’. This is the topic you want your degree to be in and you choose this at the end of year one ready to start in year two. There are four choices you can choose from they are SE, Cyber Security, Data Analyst, or IT Consultancy. Now I was really lucky that my employer let me decide the pathway, but I know others who their company had pre-chosen it, something to keep in mind if you’re thinking about this.
What a Year Teaching Looks Like
I think this is a product of COVID-19 and could potentially change but currently my units are blocked learning. What this means is I have two short and dense units essentially its two units split up by the Christmas break and a long and thin unit that lasts the whole of the that year. Each year I have three units and they can vary in level depending on the year, this is because the degree is part-time.
Year 1 - All units Level 4
Year 2 - Two Level 5 units and one Level 4
Year 3 - Two Level 5 units and one Level 6
Year 4 - All units Level 6
I have friends at uni where they study all three units at once and then all their assignments are due at the same time across all the units. I find blocked teaching really helpful and MMU have designed the topic order well as the former unit usually supports the latter. For example, in year 2 we had a unit called Computer Fundamentals and the assignment was an SQL database. The next unit we had was Advanced Programming and for the assignment we had to build a program that interacted with; you guessed it a SQL database.
The long unit is usually a beast of a topic, dedicated to something businessy, and involves the company you work for. If you’re and employer and thinking of offering this scheme this one’s for you. The assignments in these units are aimed at your employer and you take all the knowledge and skills the lectures give you and apply them directly to the company. Take my project this year for example I’m developing a piece of software that will solve an issue in my company which is currently a huge drain on resources in time and costs. I won’t go into specifics but it’s a task requested by our customers frequently that takes several hours to complete. My assignment is aimed at solving this problem and the program that I write will turn this from hours into seconds.
Classmates
This is something that I had to talk about because there isn't just your company who have students on the Degree Apprenticeship there are many and from many impressive companies. This is one of the biggest benefits of this course is that you meet these people and it’s not just people straight from college into a new job there are those who have been working 10+ years in senior positions in their company. I believe Barclays Bank had some involvement when setting up this scheme so you meet a lot of people from Barclays but there are others such as Lloyds Bank, IBM, and AstraZeneca. It’s a great place to network and build your LinkedIn profile all of that, but it’s also a great place to meet people who have the same passions and interests as you.
These people have found their way to this course just as you have, and you can bet for similar reasons, and they have great experience, knowledge, and stories. I have a friend called Hamzah and this guy is a social butterfly, he flutters from one conversation to another and loves to talk to anyone and has no problem doing it. The whole year knows him, and he knows everyone, always chatting (Not during lectures of course) and getting to know people. If you decide to do this, be like Hamzah.
Worklife Balance
I think this could be the most difficult thing about the Degree Apprenticeship. Remember you have a full-time job while completing this degree so the days you are not in uni is spent actually doing your job. I think if your straight from college you may be given more time in the working day to also complete some uni stuff, but I have been at my company now for a few years and I’m a key member in my team. This doesn’t leave any time between projects to get some uni work done so this leaves me with dedicating my evenings to it.
If you are not a wiz already you will need to invest some time in improving your time management and productivity. I will link some really good resources at the end of the post, but this is key if you’re going to do well. Day one of each term you are told about your assignments, and they don’t wait around you get to work on them straight away. So, this is a full-time job with a minimum of two assignment or tests you need to study for and that’s just work, you have family, friends, hobbies when do you fit it all in? Like I said this is one of the most difficult things and you will find yourself giving up some stuff along the way but to best combat that invest in time management and a solid calendar app. I like Fantastical because you can sync all your calendars and to-do lists in near real-time but its only for Mac and you pay for it so alternatively Google calendar can’t be beat as a universal free option.
Here’s my calendar of a standard week I try my best to keep the weekends as free as possible but when assignments/ tests are due it’s not uncommon to see a weekend dedicated to uni work.
Red - Work
Orange - University
Purple/ Other - Personal
Calendar view.
Student Debt
Student debt? What student debt? This is another great benefit of the Degree Apprenticeship is that at the end of this, you have no debt owed. The degree is funded mostly by the government and partly by your employer so yourself doesn’t pay a penny.
Positives & Negatives
I spoke about some of the key ones above, but I thought it would be good to give a quick list if you’re weighing up the decision to do or not to do.
Positives
No student debt
Meet like-minded people
Build a career while studying
Access to all uni resources
Negatives
Work-life balance can be tough
Miss out on normal uni life
There can be a lot of pressure
Would I Recommend it?
We recently hired a guy who is straight out of college, and I was hit with this question when he joined as he wants to complete a degree by chance in Cyber Security. One of the four pathways for the Degree Apprenticeship, remember them?
Overall, yes, I would recommend it. You get a degree with no student debt at the end of it all while building a career. If you should do it however that’s a very personal decision and one not to be made lightly. If you want to jump straight into the working life, earn money while completing a degree and dodge the student debt then it’s a hard YES. But if you feel you’re not ready for the pressures of working life or just don’t want to start work yet and there is nothing wrong with that maybe it’s not for you. To quote my grandma “You’re a kid a lot longer than you are an adult so enjoy it”.
There is so much more I could talk about and much more detail that I haven’t gone into, if you are interested the below is the link to the website of MMU. If you still have questions or just want to chat, the best way to reach me is on LinkedIn which can be found here.