As an employer’s Training Manager I was an early adopter of the “Foundation Degree” model in the early noughties. I was operating a four-year training programme with a college partner which involved trainees attending college on a “block-release” basis, typically for 12 weeks each year. The terminal qualification was an Higher National Diploma. This model was reasonably common from the late 1940s to 1980s but had become rare and almost forgotten. In fact my employer had sponsored a national specialist college in the post-war period, now part of London South Bank University. Our problem was that able recruits were beginning to believe that anything less than a degree just “didn’t cut it”. So they just didn’t apply, or worse still accepted our job offer as a “fall-back”, but then welched at the last minute, “because their exam scores were better than expected”. UK University fees at the time were less than £1000 PA.
The solution was to seek a third partner, a university. Between us we created a new model involving a National Certificate, Foundation Degree and ultimately Bachelors Degree in the same timeframe. The programme was very demanding of participants, but we attracted people of strong potential, with either a strong work ethic or able to gain one quickly, they got paid, got a good degree and have all gone on to excellent careers. What I find slightly ironic is that it seems that if I was in the US that I could have just called my earlier iteration some form of “lite” degree. In the UK, we would have attracted opprobrium if not prosecution for using the word “degree” in connection with our 1990s model, which was in practice easily the equal and more of many bachelors programmes. I suppose that we have to put “Module” and “Nanodegree” alongside “Tomaato” and “Tomaeto”
PS I’m not criticising any valid learning, whatever we want to call it and I'm totally supportive of academic equivalence credit being given for vocational learning. But as Andy says, in a UK context the first job candidate to go on about their “Nanodegree” may elicit laughter, rather than respect.
PS for Andy,We do of course have the new IET Academy proposition.
As an employer’s Training Manager I was an early adopter of the “Foundation Degree” model in the early noughties. I was operating a four-year training programme with a college partner which involved trainees attending college on a “block-release” basis, typically for 12 weeks each year. The terminal qualification was an Higher National Diploma. This model was reasonably common from the late 1940s to 1980s but had become rare and almost forgotten. In fact my employer had sponsored a national specialist college in the post-war period, now part of London South Bank University. Our problem was that able recruits were beginning to believe that anything less than a degree just “didn’t cut it”. So they just didn’t apply, or worse still accepted our job offer as a “fall-back”, but then welched at the last minute, “because their exam scores were better than expected”. UK University fees at the time were less than £1000 PA.
The solution was to seek a third partner, a university. Between us we created a new model involving a National Certificate, Foundation Degree and ultimately Bachelors Degree in the same timeframe. The programme was very demanding of participants, but we attracted people of strong potential, with either a strong work ethic or able to gain one quickly, they got paid, got a good degree and have all gone on to excellent careers. What I find slightly ironic is that it seems that if I was in the US that I could have just called my earlier iteration some form of “lite” degree. In the UK, we would have attracted opprobrium if not prosecution for using the word “degree” in connection with our 1990s model, which was in practice easily the equal and more of many bachelors programmes. I suppose that we have to put “Module” and “Nanodegree” alongside “Tomaato” and “Tomaeto”
PS I’m not criticising any valid learning, whatever we want to call it and I'm totally supportive of academic equivalence credit being given for vocational learning. But as Andy says, in a UK context the first job candidate to go on about their “Nanodegree” may elicit laughter, rather than respect.
PS for Andy,We do of course have the new IET Academy proposition.
