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

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

Parents

0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

I intend to make this my last response to myself, as I appreciate that this “discussion” has become something of a monologue. Hopefully the argument has moved forward and there isn’t much more that I can add.

When I started this forum, my experience was that many Chartered Engineers and HR professionals, didn’t understand that there were apprenticeships that included degrees. Perhaps more importantly, long-established cultural values assuming academic learning to be of “higher status” than vocational had strengthened, such that negative prejudice towards apprenticeships had become endemic. In many respects, Engineering and Technology , should have been one of the last places for such negative prejudices to take root and flourish, especially in the workplace, but they clearly have.

The issues involved are complex and mainly sociological. I have argued that a significant cause within the community of professional engineering institutions has been a “neediness” for status. This certainly isn’t unique to engineering and technology, the growth in the number of professions offering “Chartered status” illustrates that. I’m Chartered through CIPD and have had some experience with quite a wide range of other professions. What many of them seem to lack is a “dog in the manger” or “snobbish” attitude towards others in their own field.

A potential factor seems to me, the way that engineering has been divided and “siloed” at such an early age on academic grounds. We could get away with that, when only a small minority of people gained a university education. But the assumption that someone who got superior academic results as a teenager and became a full-time student is “better” than someone with more moderate teenage academic achievement, who combined workplace and academic learning, especially to “level 4” and beyond, is actually quite dubious. It is partly for that reason that I support “progression”, but when Engineering Council, decided that they did too; instead of creating a genuinely progressive system for engineers, they set about downgrading those who were Incorporated, defenestrating their carefully created “different but equally valuable” proposition and destroying the value of those engineering degrees with a “more practical” orientation. I hope that the lessons may have been learned, but it can take decades to “turn the ship”.

I have a copy of SARTOR 1990 where the introduction places an emphasis on “relevance to real work” and “integration of theory and practice”. However it also emphasised a 1-2-3 process of “education”, “training” and “experience”. If you didn’t “tick the number 1 box” at university or via notoriously tricky examinations, then the only option was to hope that your career had taken off enough, to be invited if you were aged over 35, to write a technical treatise. I didn’t pick up the word “apprenticeship” and perhaps some negative connotations were already growing by 1990, with politicians looking to appropriate that “brand” for short youth training programmes, not comprehensive 4-5 year training schemes with good qualifications and off the job training.

These three stories give a current perspective

https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/30/employers-must-be-at-the-heart-of-the-vocational-education-system/

The “The Institute of Student Employers” used to be “The Association of Graduate Recruiters” adopting its current name in 2017. At the time they said “The change to the ISE reflects that the majority of its employer members take a broader approach to how they recruit and develop emerging talent, hiring school leavers, apprentices and interns alongside graduates.” I have never had any affiliation with it, but as an employer’s training manager for many years, I felt that in its previous form, it tended to reinforce the assumption that a “professional” must first become a full-time university student. This inevitably contributed, even if not intentionally towards negative and “snobbish” attitudes towards apprenticeships. Many of the younger generation of HR professionals in organisations with engineers, who affiliated to AGR were themselves recruited as graduates with little understanding of the apprenticeship concept.

https://feweek.co.uk/2019/12/01/perceptions-of-engineering-hold-the-sector-back/

On the whole I support this, but I would have preferred that “highlights the different levels of jobs available, with apprentice and technician levels alongside professional occupations.” Had been worded a little differently, this may of course be the editor rather than Rhys Morgan. The first use of “level” could read “types” the second “roles”. The phrase “professional occupation” is also the subject of a variety of definitions. It may be that Dr Morgan’s intent here, is for “Professional” to mean “Chartered”? Other members of “The Engineering Establishment” have in the past promoted the idea of an “Associate Professional” and there are many areas of professional institution influence, where anyone who isn’t Chartered or who didn’t go to the right university will find negative prejudice.

Why are we so interested in “levels” and what do we actually mean when we refer to people as being at a higher and lower “level”? More highly educated? More experienced? Trusted with greater risk? Of higher social rank or status? The Cleese, Barker, Corbett sketch? Our own Engineering Council recognised the problem 20+ years ago and evolved a policy that its registrants were “different but equally valuable”, only to throw it out of the window as soon as the IIE wasn’t there to defend it.

I have never liked “political correctness” or supported those who chose to take offence and claim to have been slighted for trivial reasons. Anyone who has spent time in the Military, or in Yorkshire or in any form of heavy industry for that matter, should understand, that it can be counterproductive. Nevertheless, we have over recent decades largely educated people to desist from disrespectful attitudes in the workplace, towards those of a different gender, race or other personal characteristics. I agree that the image of “engineers” as wearers of hard hats or as wielders of oily rags (a metaphor probably created by our own “leaders”) is limiting and may deter many, disproportionately so females. However, the obsession with stratification within the profession has been to support widespread negative stereotyping of those from the apprenticeship tradition as “lower level cloth cap working class types” and visit snobbery upon them. The effect has therefore been to replace some forms of “ignorance” or “entitlement” with another.

For the record in case anyone hasn’t read my previous comments, I support the idea that our (IET) definition of a Professional Engineer, should be someone who illustrates a graduate standard (I nearly said “level”) of knowledge and understanding, with proven competence through exercising significant personal responsibility. Part of the role of a Technician is to be skilled and take responsibility and act within their competence. An apprentice or trainee of any type has a similar obligation but under suitable overall supervision. Anyone who has chosen to accept the IET and/or Engineering Council code of contact, should have the right to equal respect. Employers, professional bodies and others need to evaluate the capability of practitioners in various ways, but the “trickle down” approach of rationing out relative status, doesn’t achieve that very well , because most of those deemed to be “lower level” simply don’t want to partcipate in something which tends to diminish them.

https://feweek.co.uk/2019/12/03/forces-for-good-ex-military-impress-as-trainee-lecturers/

I like this and note that Armed Forces training schools offer an example of the type of training infrastructure for apprentices that was once widely available in major industries. I note also that on transition to civilian life the distinctions between commissioned and non-commissioned ranks with the mess system of social stratification, traditional in that environment largely disappears. In earlier generations when so many people had experience of military service, this was perhaps more influential and people “knew their place”. In recent times even within that environment, attitudes have evolved considerably.

For many years now, those in Further Education have bemoaned their inferior treatment relative to universities and few have registered with Engineering Council as an example to students and apprentices. I sincerely hope that these service leavers do not eventually find themselves disillusioned and a "forgotten army" in the same way that many former IEng registrants did.
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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

I intend to make this my last response to myself, as I appreciate that this “discussion” has become something of a monologue. Hopefully the argument has moved forward and there isn’t much more that I can add.

When I started this forum, my experience was that many Chartered Engineers and HR professionals, didn’t understand that there were apprenticeships that included degrees. Perhaps more importantly, long-established cultural values assuming academic learning to be of “higher status” than vocational had strengthened, such that negative prejudice towards apprenticeships had become endemic. In many respects, Engineering and Technology , should have been one of the last places for such negative prejudices to take root and flourish, especially in the workplace, but they clearly have.

The issues involved are complex and mainly sociological. I have argued that a significant cause within the community of professional engineering institutions has been a “neediness” for status. This certainly isn’t unique to engineering and technology, the growth in the number of professions offering “Chartered status” illustrates that. I’m Chartered through CIPD and have had some experience with quite a wide range of other professions. What many of them seem to lack is a “dog in the manger” or “snobbish” attitude towards others in their own field.

A potential factor seems to me, the way that engineering has been divided and “siloed” at such an early age on academic grounds. We could get away with that, when only a small minority of people gained a university education. But the assumption that someone who got superior academic results as a teenager and became a full-time student is “better” than someone with more moderate teenage academic achievement, who combined workplace and academic learning, especially to “level 4” and beyond, is actually quite dubious. It is partly for that reason that I support “progression”, but when Engineering Council, decided that they did too; instead of creating a genuinely progressive system for engineers, they set about downgrading those who were Incorporated, defenestrating their carefully created “different but equally valuable” proposition and destroying the value of those engineering degrees with a “more practical” orientation. I hope that the lessons may have been learned, but it can take decades to “turn the ship”.

I have a copy of SARTOR 1990 where the introduction places an emphasis on “relevance to real work” and “integration of theory and practice”. However it also emphasised a 1-2-3 process of “education”, “training” and “experience”. If you didn’t “tick the number 1 box” at university or via notoriously tricky examinations, then the only option was to hope that your career had taken off enough, to be invited if you were aged over 35, to write a technical treatise. I didn’t pick up the word “apprenticeship” and perhaps some negative connotations were already growing by 1990, with politicians looking to appropriate that “brand” for short youth training programmes, not comprehensive 4-5 year training schemes with good qualifications and off the job training.

These three stories give a current perspective

https://feweek.co.uk/2019/11/30/employers-must-be-at-the-heart-of-the-vocational-education-system/

The “The Institute of Student Employers” used to be “The Association of Graduate Recruiters” adopting its current name in 2017. At the time they said “The change to the ISE reflects that the majority of its employer members take a broader approach to how they recruit and develop emerging talent, hiring school leavers, apprentices and interns alongside graduates.” I have never had any affiliation with it, but as an employer’s training manager for many years, I felt that in its previous form, it tended to reinforce the assumption that a “professional” must first become a full-time university student. This inevitably contributed, even if not intentionally towards negative and “snobbish” attitudes towards apprenticeships. Many of the younger generation of HR professionals in organisations with engineers, who affiliated to AGR were themselves recruited as graduates with little understanding of the apprenticeship concept.

https://feweek.co.uk/2019/12/01/perceptions-of-engineering-hold-the-sector-back/

On the whole I support this, but I would have preferred that “highlights the different levels of jobs available, with apprentice and technician levels alongside professional occupations.” Had been worded a little differently, this may of course be the editor rather than Rhys Morgan. The first use of “level” could read “types” the second “roles”. The phrase “professional occupation” is also the subject of a variety of definitions. It may be that Dr Morgan’s intent here, is for “Professional” to mean “Chartered”? Other members of “The Engineering Establishment” have in the past promoted the idea of an “Associate Professional” and there are many areas of professional institution influence, where anyone who isn’t Chartered or who didn’t go to the right university will find negative prejudice.

Why are we so interested in “levels” and what do we actually mean when we refer to people as being at a higher and lower “level”? More highly educated? More experienced? Trusted with greater risk? Of higher social rank or status? The Cleese, Barker, Corbett sketch? Our own Engineering Council recognised the problem 20+ years ago and evolved a policy that its registrants were “different but equally valuable”, only to throw it out of the window as soon as the IIE wasn’t there to defend it.

I have never liked “political correctness” or supported those who chose to take offence and claim to have been slighted for trivial reasons. Anyone who has spent time in the Military, or in Yorkshire or in any form of heavy industry for that matter, should understand, that it can be counterproductive. Nevertheless, we have over recent decades largely educated people to desist from disrespectful attitudes in the workplace, towards those of a different gender, race or other personal characteristics. I agree that the image of “engineers” as wearers of hard hats or as wielders of oily rags (a metaphor probably created by our own “leaders”) is limiting and may deter many, disproportionately so females. However, the obsession with stratification within the profession has been to support widespread negative stereotyping of those from the apprenticeship tradition as “lower level cloth cap working class types” and visit snobbery upon them. The effect has therefore been to replace some forms of “ignorance” or “entitlement” with another.

For the record in case anyone hasn’t read my previous comments, I support the idea that our (IET) definition of a Professional Engineer, should be someone who illustrates a graduate standard (I nearly said “level”) of knowledge and understanding, with proven competence through exercising significant personal responsibility. Part of the role of a Technician is to be skilled and take responsibility and act within their competence. An apprentice or trainee of any type has a similar obligation but under suitable overall supervision. Anyone who has chosen to accept the IET and/or Engineering Council code of contact, should have the right to equal respect. Employers, professional bodies and others need to evaluate the capability of practitioners in various ways, but the “trickle down” approach of rationing out relative status, doesn’t achieve that very well , because most of those deemed to be “lower level” simply don’t want to partcipate in something which tends to diminish them.

https://feweek.co.uk/2019/12/03/forces-for-good-ex-military-impress-as-trainee-lecturers/

I like this and note that Armed Forces training schools offer an example of the type of training infrastructure for apprentices that was once widely available in major industries. I note also that on transition to civilian life the distinctions between commissioned and non-commissioned ranks with the mess system of social stratification, traditional in that environment largely disappears. In earlier generations when so many people had experience of military service, this was perhaps more influential and people “knew their place”. In recent times even within that environment, attitudes have evolved considerably.

For many years now, those in Further Education have bemoaned their inferior treatment relative to universities and few have registered with Engineering Council as an example to students and apprentices. I sincerely hope that these service leavers do not eventually find themselves disillusioned and a "forgotten army" in the same way that many former IEng registrants did.
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Is an Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway to Chartered Engineer - a historical anachronism or the future?

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