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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
    Andy,


    This is “one I started earlier”    ? , but also addresses the issues you highlight.  It is rare that we don’t have common ground, because we share the similar fundamental aims, as I hope do most IET members, in terms of looking to the future.   


    The article below comes from a different perspective to my proposition, by focusing on developing what we might see as “advanced technicians”.  

    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/10/vocational-progression-must-be-treated-like-more-academic-options/


    Coming from an educational perspective, the writer uses qualification “levels” as a frame of reference. I should note that this frame of reference in effect simply counts years in education, so a full-time bachelors undergraduate university student, moves from level 3 to level 6 over three years, passing though levels 4&5 without even noticing. Therefore using this frame of reference, someone following the academic pathway starts on leaving school as “equal” to a craft based technician, passing swiftly through the “equivalent” of advanced technician and even the minimum academic benchmark for Incorporated Engineer, usually without gaining any meaningful vocational capability en-route.  


    The writer states; “Those taking level 4/5 qualifications are more similar socio-economically to those taking a bachelor’s degree at a non-Russell Group university than they are to level 3 students.”  and “England is unusual in having such a tiny proportion of young people with an intermediate, level 4 or 5 qualification, despite high demand from employers and substantial salary returns.”


    A level 4/5 qualification would be understood by most of us as HNC/HND. These were a traditional pathway for many apprenticeships that created “engineers”. They were “squeezed out” by some of the factors that you highlight, such as; the loss of major industries, fragmentation of formerly large employers and the growth of degree opportunities. Those that did survive, became increasingly “looked down upon” by those with levels 6&7 qualifications, described as “higher”, but in practice simply a matter of spending an additional couple of years in full-time education.  Work experience or vocational training counts for nothing in this “academic” frame of reference.


    If I accept the writer’s assertions as reasonable for the sake of argument, I could interpret them as; “more skilled people are generally as successful as the more educated”. If we actually valued and compared their relative “capability”, we would find that it is substantially similar, overlapping and broadly of "graduate standard".


    I don’t think that we can “put the genie back in the bottle”.  The momentum that has taken us to a circa 50% graduate younger population is too great and the costs of trying to unravel this too high.  I also think that graduate standard, should be our engineering community’s benchmark for recognition as “an Engineer”, as essentially it already is. However, in practice there are now many graduate technicians and there always have been many “non-graduate” engineers, often of post-graduate capability, but without that capability being recognised in an academic context.  


    Unfortunately, to the extent that Engineering Council exercises leadership of the family of professional institutions, it has adopted a “top-down” perspective, primarily concerned with elite status and adopting the academic perspective of “higher and lower”. In particular by defenestrating the principle that it had evolved, of the three types of professional that it codified being “different but equally valuable”. This principle was unfortunately resented by those primarily concerned with relative status, who cite “standards”, but in practice are often motivated by snobbery and “nothing special” themselves.  Adding to the mix is the need to align with international accords (of academics) and the naturally convenient advantages of using university qualifications as a measure. Clearly this has left us with a problem.  Suggestions welcome to resolve it!              


Reply
  • 0
    Andy,


    This is “one I started earlier”    ? , but also addresses the issues you highlight.  It is rare that we don’t have common ground, because we share the similar fundamental aims, as I hope do most IET members, in terms of looking to the future.   


    The article below comes from a different perspective to my proposition, by focusing on developing what we might see as “advanced technicians”.  

    https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/10/vocational-progression-must-be-treated-like-more-academic-options/


    Coming from an educational perspective, the writer uses qualification “levels” as a frame of reference. I should note that this frame of reference in effect simply counts years in education, so a full-time bachelors undergraduate university student, moves from level 3 to level 6 over three years, passing though levels 4&5 without even noticing. Therefore using this frame of reference, someone following the academic pathway starts on leaving school as “equal” to a craft based technician, passing swiftly through the “equivalent” of advanced technician and even the minimum academic benchmark for Incorporated Engineer, usually without gaining any meaningful vocational capability en-route.  


    The writer states; “Those taking level 4/5 qualifications are more similar socio-economically to those taking a bachelor’s degree at a non-Russell Group university than they are to level 3 students.”  and “England is unusual in having such a tiny proportion of young people with an intermediate, level 4 or 5 qualification, despite high demand from employers and substantial salary returns.”


    A level 4/5 qualification would be understood by most of us as HNC/HND. These were a traditional pathway for many apprenticeships that created “engineers”. They were “squeezed out” by some of the factors that you highlight, such as; the loss of major industries, fragmentation of formerly large employers and the growth of degree opportunities. Those that did survive, became increasingly “looked down upon” by those with levels 6&7 qualifications, described as “higher”, but in practice simply a matter of spending an additional couple of years in full-time education.  Work experience or vocational training counts for nothing in this “academic” frame of reference.


    If I accept the writer’s assertions as reasonable for the sake of argument, I could interpret them as; “more skilled people are generally as successful as the more educated”. If we actually valued and compared their relative “capability”, we would find that it is substantially similar, overlapping and broadly of "graduate standard".


    I don’t think that we can “put the genie back in the bottle”.  The momentum that has taken us to a circa 50% graduate younger population is too great and the costs of trying to unravel this too high.  I also think that graduate standard, should be our engineering community’s benchmark for recognition as “an Engineer”, as essentially it already is. However, in practice there are now many graduate technicians and there always have been many “non-graduate” engineers, often of post-graduate capability, but without that capability being recognised in an academic context.  


    Unfortunately, to the extent that Engineering Council exercises leadership of the family of professional institutions, it has adopted a “top-down” perspective, primarily concerned with elite status and adopting the academic perspective of “higher and lower”. In particular by defenestrating the principle that it had evolved, of the three types of professional that it codified being “different but equally valuable”. This principle was unfortunately resented by those primarily concerned with relative status, who cite “standards”, but in practice are often motivated by snobbery and “nothing special” themselves.  Adding to the mix is the need to align with international accords (of academics) and the naturally convenient advantages of using university qualifications as a measure. Clearly this has left us with a problem.  Suggestions welcome to resolve it!              


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