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Is an Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway to Chartered Engineer - a historical anachronism or the future?

Roy Bowdler
This is National Apprenticeship Week.  

 

An unintended and unfortunate consequence of UK government policies and wider economic changes in the 1980s and 1990s was a very substantial decline in apprenticeships which had served previous generations so well.  They didn’t die completely because employers (like the company that I was Training Manager of) understood their value, not just for skilled craft trades, but also as an alternative option to “Graduate Training Schemes” for Engineers and Managers, traditionally leading to HNC type qualifications, but from the mid-2000s increasingly degrees. Initiative was eventually picked up by Government, turning it into a “flagship” policy.  This has had an effect, but policy is not implementation and typically the brewery visit has not been well organised (with apologies to those unfamiliar with British vulgar slang). However, changes like this can take years if not decades to “bed in”, so I hope that we will keep trying.

 

Engineering Council has always been dominated by the academic perspective and relatively poorly connected with employers, therefore it has associated Apprenticeships with Technicians and not with Chartered Engineers, although it accepted that it was possible "exceptionally via bridges and ladders” for a Technician to develop into a Chartered Engineer. Incorporated (formerly Technician) Engineer was also drawn from the Apprenticeship tradition. However, once the qualification benchmark was adjusted to bachelors level, it was also intended to become the “mainstream” category for graduates, with CEng being “premium” or “elite”.  Unfortunately the Incorporated category has not been successful and its international equivalent “Technologist” defined as it is by degree content (i.e. less calculus than an “engineer”) also seems equally poorly regarded or even legally restricted in other countries.

 

Now we have Degree Apprentices coming through, the profession has responded by offering Incorporated Engineer recognition at an early career stage. This should in principal be a good thing and I have advocated it in the past. However, I am seriously concerned that this may also stigmatise them as a “second class” form of professional, as has been the tradition to date.

 

Over the last few years Engineering Council has adopted a policy encouraging younger engineers to consider the Incorporated Engineer category as a “stepping stone” to Chartered Engineer. Some professional institutions have promoted this often with a particular focus on those “without the right degree for CEng” with some success. However the approach “kicks the can down the road” to the question of how they should subsequently transfer to CEng.  There are potentially likely to be some frustrated, disillusioned and even angry engineers, if they find that “progression” is blocked and that they are stuck on a “stepping stone”.  We don’t need more unnecessary “enemies” amongst them, we have created enough already. 

 

A further problem is that those with accredited degrees do not expect to require a “stepping stone” and consider IEng to have no value for them or even perhaps at worst insulting. Many employers of Chartered Engineers and the professional institutions are steeped in the tradition of recruiting those with accredited degrees and developing them to Chartered Engineer in around 3-5 years. Other graduate recruiters may be less academically selective, but share similar traditions and expectations.

 

Is therefore a Degree Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway compared to a CEng accredited (BEng or MEng) full-time undergraduate degree course?  Is performance and current capability (aka “competence”) the appropriate frame of reference for comparison, or should those from each pathway be separated academically and considered to be different “types”, or on “fast” and slow tracks”?

 

As Degree Apprenticeships develop further, there will be those who gain CEng accredited degrees and have work experience via an “even faster track”. My concern is that those graduates from Degree Apprenticeships who are more competent and productive than their age group peers from full-time degree programmes, but disadvantaged in academic recognition terms, may find themselves in a seemingly unfair and anomalous situation.  

 

In addition, those employers who primarily “exploit existing technology” may continue to feel that the Engineering Council proposition is contrary to their interests and discourage engagement. Employers who invest in apprenticeships state that they experience greater loyalty from former apprentices, relative to graduate trainees and often a better return on investment.  Whereas the professional institution proposition emphasises different priorities, which may align quite well with Research & Development or Consultancy type business models, but not with Operations and Maintenance or Contracting. My experience as an employer trying to encourage professional engagement was that the Professional Institution concerned advised employees informally to “move on if you want to become Chartered”, because they valued Project Engineering less than Design Engineering. As for management, this was definitely “chartered engineering” if you held the right type of engineering degree and valued if it was “prestigious”. If you didn’t hold the right type of engineering degree and weren’t “highly prestigious” then it wasn't valued much.

 

If Degree Apprenticeships become more strongly established, do we want to accept them as an equally valid pathway to a range of excellent careers including Chartered Engineer, or do we wish to continue our long-standing policy of treating them as useful but second or third class pathways? Will weasel words of platitude be offered ,whilst existing attitudes and practice are allowed to prevail?    


If the answer is we that want to give apprentices equal value, then in the current climate of retribution, should those who have enthusiastically encouraged the stigma and snobbery against them consider falling on their swords? Enthusiasm for excellence in engineering, especially in stretching academic circumstances is a virtue not a crime and I strongly support it. Unfortunately however many around the Engineering Council family, perhaps motivated by a neediness for “status”, seem to have been mainly concerned with rationing access to the Chartered category by other “graduate level” practitioners, and disparaging those drawn from the apprenticeship tradition. 

 

Further Reading

 
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a-new-apprenticeship-programme-kicks-off-national-apprenticeship-week-2018

 
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-will-end-outdated-snobbery-towards-apprenticeships

 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/further-education/12193128/Theres-been-an-apprenticeship-stigma-for-far-too-long.html

 
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/theres-still-a-stigma-around-apprenticeships-people-look-down-on-you-3622353-Oct2017/

 
https://www.fenews.co.uk/featured-article/14816-overcoming-the-apprenticeships-stigma-not-before-time

 
https://www.bcselectrics.co.uk/news/pushing-back-against-stigma-apprenticeships

 
‘Stigma against apprenticeships must end,’ says Network Rail boss. Mark Carne, Network’s Rail’s chief executive (Rail Technology News)

   
https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/national-apprenticeship-week-young-women-stem-apprenticeship-a3781606.html

 
http://www.aston.ac.uk/news/releases/2017/july/uks-first-degree-apprentices-graduate/

 
https://www.stem.org.uk/news-and-views/opinions/apprenticeships-better-skills-better-careers          

 
http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/blog/Pages/Why-I-chose-the-degree-apprenticeship-route.aspx               

 

 

 

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  • 0
    Graham, thanks for your obviously very well informed thoughtful contribution. 


    We live in an age of acute sensitivity to what have become unacceptable forms of negative prejudice, an over-sensitivity in my opinion. We shouldn’t impinge upon people’s right to express preferences, likes and dislikes, or affiliate how they wish, including by academic means which has become a currency that has to some extent supplanted earlier indicators of social class. Humans are by nature tribal and wish somehow to distinguish between “them and us”, if the “us” group holds some form of social advantage, then it get calls “snobbery” which is legal, if this were gender of race based then it would be illegal (in The UK).


    Some simplistic personal observations: Most engineers and technicians in the workplace are far too occupied with their common productive purpose. Most businesses aren’t perfect meritocracies, but they prioritise performance and competence in practice over academic qualifications. The education system (including universities) seems to me to have become obsessed with competition and rank. Much of the “Engineering Council family” seeks to serve only a narrow fraction of “elite” engineers . So CEng is described by EC as offering “The status of being part of a technological elite” . Status and snobbery go together.  By chance this subject came up recently at a discussion between four experienced IEng (3 FIET), two felt that they had not experienced negative prejudice and two were adamant that it was endemic.        


    Academic excellence and research are good things, but not especially relevant, to evaluating the competence of, or in particular discriminating between, most practising Engineers for the purposes of placing them on a register of professionals.  If we assume that almost all of the potential “Engineers and Technicians” who we wish to serve, will continue to engage in formal education into their early twenties, different blends of knowledge will tend to optimise them for different roles. By that point in time most will never again engage with the “education system”.  Some may have already acquired a sufficiently sound base of knowledge and skills via an apprenticeship to carry them through a long career, others may have a good education which potentially can be developed into productive skills.  A key part of my proposition here is that for a prospective Chartered Engineer the most optimum and efficient blend is to combine higher education and experience concurrently and intensively, such that by early twenties they have both good education and immediately productive skills as an “Engineer”.   There is unlikely any time soon if ever, for there to be enough opportunities for young people to follow this model as an “employed” Apprentice. Some people may also be better served by a full-time academic experience or a more “academic” programme.  


    This is not a “black and white” or “good versus bad” argument, I’m talking about optimisation (including in financial terms).  Many employers might prefer to employ someone in their twenties with a good education and any “teenage growing pains” behind them or ideally just be able to recruit a “ready-made” engineer when they want one. So part of our problem is a mismatch of expectations with academia seeking to “educate” and some employers thinking that a degree in engineering is a “training programme”.              


    I have described an engineer having “bachelors and masters level attributes” as shorthand benchmarks. Without wishing to debate the minutiae of how these attributes are defined here, we should reasonably expect a professional engineer to demonstrate at least “bachelors type” capability and if as I have suggested, chartered recognition was built on top of this then “masters type” capability at that threshold.  It is well proven that many engineers progress to “masters level” in career, albeit that they may need some focussed development to demonstrate such learning in an academic manner.  


    Where I am strongly critical of our efforts as a profession and therefore by implication those senior academics and bureaucrats who have de-facto exercised control, is the badly flawed assumption that an engineer’s career is set into a silo on the basis of their ranked aptitude for higher level mathematics and science during their teens.  This criticism isn’t  just aimed at Engineering Council, since the international Washington Accord adopts this same flawed assumption.  Of course there are some correlations between early stage academic performance and later performance in career, but much is just assumed going back to the time when getting to university at all was relatively rare and being “a university graduate” offered a significant advantages of itself (often socially derived).     


    Having written this yesterday evening but not had time to post until now- Just to pick up on some of the later comments, thanks Alastair and well-spotted with the BBC article.  


    Mark/Andy, I don’t think that Mark agreed with every word of the links he posted (please correct me Mark if you did) but they help to illustrate the issue. What I don’t think is helpful is the “left versus right political tone” of some, these issues should be above "party political point scoring".  We have had two long serving UK Prime Ministers in my time who each came to define an era and members of the “opposing tribe” endlessly slag off one or the other.  If I stick to this century only, government policies in the early noughties enabled me (with others) to evolve an “employer led degree apprenticeship” and that model was taken up by more recent governments as a policy cornerstone. The motives behind these policies is another debate.              


    Moshe, I’m pleased to see and don’t disagree with your contribution, its great that you add an international perspective.


    Arran,  in a Trades Union context Prospect would be a good example https://www.prospect.org.uk/about/who/index  although obviously it is a “real” union rather than a “pseudo” one.  In the Engineering Council Family there are numerous “members and affiliates” offering slightly different propositions    https://www.engc.org.uk/peis     https://www.engc.org.uk/pas .  There are a plethora of “trade associations” and commercial membership offerings with self-employed members (who are often de-facto employees of larger employers). I picked this link because many of us don’t seem to think of Engineering as including Construction   http://www.ibp.org.uk/trade-associations-and-industry-groups/ .  

Reply
  • 0
    Graham, thanks for your obviously very well informed thoughtful contribution. 


    We live in an age of acute sensitivity to what have become unacceptable forms of negative prejudice, an over-sensitivity in my opinion. We shouldn’t impinge upon people’s right to express preferences, likes and dislikes, or affiliate how they wish, including by academic means which has become a currency that has to some extent supplanted earlier indicators of social class. Humans are by nature tribal and wish somehow to distinguish between “them and us”, if the “us” group holds some form of social advantage, then it get calls “snobbery” which is legal, if this were gender of race based then it would be illegal (in The UK).


    Some simplistic personal observations: Most engineers and technicians in the workplace are far too occupied with their common productive purpose. Most businesses aren’t perfect meritocracies, but they prioritise performance and competence in practice over academic qualifications. The education system (including universities) seems to me to have become obsessed with competition and rank. Much of the “Engineering Council family” seeks to serve only a narrow fraction of “elite” engineers . So CEng is described by EC as offering “The status of being part of a technological elite” . Status and snobbery go together.  By chance this subject came up recently at a discussion between four experienced IEng (3 FIET), two felt that they had not experienced negative prejudice and two were adamant that it was endemic.        


    Academic excellence and research are good things, but not especially relevant, to evaluating the competence of, or in particular discriminating between, most practising Engineers for the purposes of placing them on a register of professionals.  If we assume that almost all of the potential “Engineers and Technicians” who we wish to serve, will continue to engage in formal education into their early twenties, different blends of knowledge will tend to optimise them for different roles. By that point in time most will never again engage with the “education system”.  Some may have already acquired a sufficiently sound base of knowledge and skills via an apprenticeship to carry them through a long career, others may have a good education which potentially can be developed into productive skills.  A key part of my proposition here is that for a prospective Chartered Engineer the most optimum and efficient blend is to combine higher education and experience concurrently and intensively, such that by early twenties they have both good education and immediately productive skills as an “Engineer”.   There is unlikely any time soon if ever, for there to be enough opportunities for young people to follow this model as an “employed” Apprentice. Some people may also be better served by a full-time academic experience or a more “academic” programme.  


    This is not a “black and white” or “good versus bad” argument, I’m talking about optimisation (including in financial terms).  Many employers might prefer to employ someone in their twenties with a good education and any “teenage growing pains” behind them or ideally just be able to recruit a “ready-made” engineer when they want one. So part of our problem is a mismatch of expectations with academia seeking to “educate” and some employers thinking that a degree in engineering is a “training programme”.              


    I have described an engineer having “bachelors and masters level attributes” as shorthand benchmarks. Without wishing to debate the minutiae of how these attributes are defined here, we should reasonably expect a professional engineer to demonstrate at least “bachelors type” capability and if as I have suggested, chartered recognition was built on top of this then “masters type” capability at that threshold.  It is well proven that many engineers progress to “masters level” in career, albeit that they may need some focussed development to demonstrate such learning in an academic manner.  


    Where I am strongly critical of our efforts as a profession and therefore by implication those senior academics and bureaucrats who have de-facto exercised control, is the badly flawed assumption that an engineer’s career is set into a silo on the basis of their ranked aptitude for higher level mathematics and science during their teens.  This criticism isn’t  just aimed at Engineering Council, since the international Washington Accord adopts this same flawed assumption.  Of course there are some correlations between early stage academic performance and later performance in career, but much is just assumed going back to the time when getting to university at all was relatively rare and being “a university graduate” offered a significant advantages of itself (often socially derived).     


    Having written this yesterday evening but not had time to post until now- Just to pick up on some of the later comments, thanks Alastair and well-spotted with the BBC article.  


    Mark/Andy, I don’t think that Mark agreed with every word of the links he posted (please correct me Mark if you did) but they help to illustrate the issue. What I don’t think is helpful is the “left versus right political tone” of some, these issues should be above "party political point scoring".  We have had two long serving UK Prime Ministers in my time who each came to define an era and members of the “opposing tribe” endlessly slag off one or the other.  If I stick to this century only, government policies in the early noughties enabled me (with others) to evolve an “employer led degree apprenticeship” and that model was taken up by more recent governments as a policy cornerstone. The motives behind these policies is another debate.              


    Moshe, I’m pleased to see and don’t disagree with your contribution, its great that you add an international perspective.


    Arran,  in a Trades Union context Prospect would be a good example https://www.prospect.org.uk/about/who/index  although obviously it is a “real” union rather than a “pseudo” one.  In the Engineering Council Family there are numerous “members and affiliates” offering slightly different propositions    https://www.engc.org.uk/peis     https://www.engc.org.uk/pas .  There are a plethora of “trade associations” and commercial membership offerings with self-employed members (who are often de-facto employees of larger employers). I picked this link because many of us don’t seem to think of Engineering as including Construction   http://www.ibp.org.uk/trade-associations-and-industry-groups/ .  

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