UK Announces Hybrid Work/Study Undergraduate Program To Fill Digital Gap 110
An anonymous reader writes The UK's Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey today revealed a new scheme where undergraduates will be able to avoid student fees and student loans by working for companies for three years whilst simultaneously undertaking academic studies with participating universities, resulting in a degree at the end of their successful involvement in the scheme. The British government will fund two-thirds of the cost of tuition and the host employer the remainder. The "Digital Apprenticeship" scheme will remunerate students at an unspecified level of pay, and though details are currently sketchy, is reported to obviate the need for student loans. The initiative is targeting the skills gap in the digital sector, particularly in the field of web-development and technical analysis.
Another way to get cheap labour (Score:1)
Pay enough, you won't have a shortage. It's called "market forces"
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Re:Another way to get cheap labour (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also about people learning useful skills. Lots of universities are teaching web design using dreamweaver! The university curriculums are too slow to reflect the latest tech in an industry that changes completely every year. It might not be the perfect solution with regards to pay, but it's certainly a step towards graduates coming out of uni with useful skills.
It doesn't matter what tools are used, I still craft web pages in a text editor. A CS degree shouldn't be thought of as providing the graduate with knowledge about how to use the latest toolsets. It should provide them with the answer to "why" rather than necessarily the "how".
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CS degrees should be dumped in favor of 90% Software Engineering degrees because that's where the jobs have been for 20+ years and will continue to be.
Students need to know both the fundamentals and the application - and to never stop learning. So maybe this is a step towards the right direction of always learning while working.
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A CS degree shouldn't be thought of as providing the graduate with knowledge about how to use the latest toolsets. It should provide them with the answer to "why" rather than necessarily the "how".
Almost everything that's been useful from my college studies, 20 years back, came from about 3 courses: the first year in-major courses (which taught recursion, functional programming, and pointers), and the data structures and algorithms course.
There was a lot of crap that seemed interesting at the time, but was from other specialties (and no classes even offered related to my specialty). Those basics: recursion, functional programming, pointers, data structures and algorithms are quite important long ter
Re:Another way to get cheap labour (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also about people learning useful skills. Lots of universities are teaching web design using dreamweaver! The university curriculums are too slow to reflect the latest tech in an industry that changes completely every year. It might not be the perfect solution with regards to pay, but it's certainly a step towards graduates coming out of uni with useful skills.
And yet this is actually the industry's fault -- for two decades, they've been complaining that universities aren't teaching practical tools that have commercial use. As soon as a university tries to fill that demand, they find that whatever tool they're using is the "wrong" one, and they've drained a lot of value out of the curriculum by teaching vendor-specific rather than generalisable skills. The industry should stop trying to tell unis what to teach, and be prepared to put new grads through additional tools-specific training.
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Isn't that like telling Bradley Wiggins that he can't ride a tricycle?
This is an "excellent" idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
1. It will flood the market with labor, helping lower labor costs for those tech businesses.
2. It will possibly detract from being a well-rounded student. So all the things about being a good citizen and such will be out the door, allowing you to be manipulated a lot easier.
3. Please feel free to mod me down if you disagree.
Re:This is an "excellent" idea! (Score:4, Informative)
The UK doesn't do liberal arts education: there aren't any gen ed requirements within degree programs. You study your subject, and that's it. Which has its downsides.
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You study your subject, and that's it.
Yeah, that's what a degree program is. The minor system was invented in the US in 1910, 700 years after the formation of Cambridge and Oxford Universities. It's not a universal aspect of higher education, in fact it's rather unusual.
Which has its downsides.
You don't mention what the downsides are of going to university in order to study a subject, and then studying that subject? I can however think of several downsides to not focusing on the subject you're there for
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Liberal arts education means just studying a little bit of everything in addition to your main subject. It's not necessarily mandatory curricula in the same way as high school - it just means that part of earning a degree is considered having been exposed to subjects outside your main one at a university level. Having been in both systems, I see the advantages to both. I studied history (up to the PhD level), and I have never regretted getting a better-than-secondary-school grounding in in astrophysics, eco
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When I was in college, it was told in the first CS course that if one wanted to spend time writing code for the rest of their lives, then ITT or another place will be happy to take their money and teach basic code monkey skills (commenting, how to check stuff in, Agile, Scrum, waterfall, etc.)
However, if one wanted some flexibility to actually do something other than coding, be it moving to IT, moving to designing software, or even the dreaded PM work, one had the skillset and got the classes to communicate
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I disagree, it is purely electioneering. These are the Tories they don't intend to pay for students, by the time they've put the scheme together it'll stink and either no student will want to go for it or no employer will want to go for it.
I am sick of people abusing the mod system as you describe, mod people down if they are flamebait etc but not because you simply disagree 'coward'.
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Yup, I reckon it's just a bit of STEM waving (fnarr fnarr).
Serfdom (Score:5, Insightful)
This is harmful to critical thinking and objectivity when a researcher is indebted (literally or otherwise) to any corporate entity.
Re: Serfdom (Score:1)
Does it matter who you're in debt with? From the summary, you only have to do 3 years and you're free to move on. The government pays 2/3rds. Better than staying in debt for 30 years.
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Where does it say that?
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The topic is undergraduate study, not research. The people who are inclined towards research will want to take a full CS degree rather than an apprenticeship.
I'm torn (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand, this recognises the reality that the vast majority of what's called "IT" is really at a skilled trade level (not dissing trades or tradespeople; I was a tradesman for many years and now consider myself as an 'academic tradesman').
On the other hand, it's likely to open the door to even more half-interested people wandering through a half-arsed degree just to get some 'qualifications'...
Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. Churning out a Wordpress brochure site requires some non-zero level of IT skills, but it's not the same level as, say, designing a data processing algorithm to run on MapReduce.
skills gap is a myth (Score:4, Insightful)
what's not a myth is the pay gap. Pay people what they're WORTH not what the Law says you can get away with. Cunts.
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You prefer to offer jobs to unskilled cuntlickers, do you? After all, it's the attitude that counts! Cunt.
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What you're worth is whatever salary you're able to negotiate.
Let's stop and take a moment to think about the implications of that statement. If employees were to take this advice to extremes, they would need to waste a lot of time on training themselves in social and negotiation skills, probably to detriment of actually useful technical skills and knowledge needed for the jobs in question. Employers would need to carefully sift through applicants or risk hiring smooth talkers at high rates, while the competent ones get shafted or worse, remain unemployed.
Sadly, this
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most of the fresh graduates we interviewed recently couldn't actually tell us what the difference between a class and an object was. And these were people with 2:1s.
Re:Could be a good idea.. (Score:4, Interesting)
It boggles the mind, doesn't it.
One of my favourite interview questions is "What's your favourite data structure, and why?", and when they answer, I ask "How would you implement it?"
For something like 80% of the candidates I've interviewed, the answer is usually "erm...."
The vast majority of the remainder say "ArrayList" but don't usually say why.
Out of those, I've only interviewed one who could give any kind of basic indication that they knew how to implement one.
The state of the industry is shocking.
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Re:Could be a good idea.. (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my favourite interview questions is "What's your favourite data structure, and why?", and when they answer, I ask "How would you implement it?"
"Favorite"?
Data structures are tools. I don't really have affection for any particular one. It depends on what I need them for.
And does the job require implementing one (assuming you are using that word the way I think that you are)? Or does it involve using them, in service of business goals?
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Data structures are tools. I don't really have affection for any particular one. It depends on what I need them for.
So an obvious answer would be whichever one you use the most often. If you don't know that, you're probably not a programmer. I'm not, though I do sometimes write my own code, or more commonly develop a small patch for someone else's. I don't actually use data structures directly, I let languages handle the details for me. I'm not figuring out how to find an array element of a given type, there are functions for that and I simply trust that they are fast. You wouldn't want to hire me as a programmer. :) (I'
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You sound like a moron.
You look like a coward.
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Your first sentience in your original post is fine. The rest of them make it very clear that you're not a programmer.
That was my whole fucking point. Congratulations on your reading comprehension skills, today. You get a gold star! I imagine you don't have too many gold star days. A programmer should be able to answer such a question immediately, even if the answer is "I don't have a favorite because..." and not just pulling something out of their ass.
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"Favorite"?
Data structures are tools. I don't really have affection for any particular one. It depends on what I need them for.
And does the job require implementing one (assuming you are using that word the way I think that you are)? Or does it involve using them, in service of business goals?
It's an interview, so I'd take "favourite" to mean "interesting".
And if someone can tell me how to implement a linked list that's a good start. Even better if they can use that to tell me when using a linked list is worse than using an array list, and vice-versa.
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If you are judging the state of the industry by the level of your not so random sampling of a few job applicants, then there might be something wrong with your judgement.
btw, I'd answer 'object' and 'I try to no have to by using the right tools/language'.
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How would I implement it? Huh!
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In what, underwater basketweaving & feminist golf-course design?
Hardly surprising (Score:2)
There are also some students who will cheat their way through, which is as much of an indictment of any system that can't catch them doing it.
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You would think that they would just run a script against some version control system to check if any of the submissions are too similar. It won't catch everyone, but it would at least catch the kids who can't even bother to cheat intelligently.
All current anti-plagiarism technology derives from prototypes made for Computer Science courses. When I was studying at Edinburgh, they were quite proud of their new technology, and rather than viewing it as "big brother" stuff, a lot of us students were more intriged by the idea of the tech.
Re: Could be a good idea.. (Score:1)
That's great, but I think that your case is atypical.
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It's not like code is regulated as a dangerous isotope or something...
At some point, some elected ID-10-T is going to start yammering about how "terr'rists are using code to attack all our computers and spy on everything you do."
After all, the government doesn't like competition.
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So it's all your fault recruiters always want longer experience in something than it's existed?
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Why the subsidy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong - I fully understand why this scheme may be good from an educational perspective and I think encouraging employers to invest in the education of the next generation of their staff is a good thing, but I don't understand why this apparently needs the remainder funded by government rather than by the student loans system? Surely it would be better to encourage companies to contribute to the education of any students in relevant fields rather than just this special group? Especially as this would have the effect of reducing pressure on the student loans system (which, for many loans, the tax payer will end up coughing up for when the student finds their degree in tourism from the University of Dudley is actually completely worthless). Not only would it be beneficial for employers, students and the taxpayer it would hopefully help weed out all the non-courses, non-universities and students that probably should be following a career path other than university, that are currently subsidised at taxpayers' expense by the SLC, because no company would pay towards the costs of such a student taking such a course at such a university.
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As opposed to the previous labour government who got into bed with microsoft. Hence all of the IT GCSE's on how to use MS Office and government websites designed around IE.
Not forgetting all of the people with GCSE's in hairdressing, golfing, DJing, car park valeting, getting the bus etc, these are the skill gaps labour considered the UK was short of.
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When I was at school (proper) typing was probably the most valuable IT skill we were never taught - although I think most kids these days can type fairly efficiently.
Still plenty of room for improvement though. I suggest awarding academic credit for high scores in Typing of the Dead (the original, not the remake).
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Because the economy increasingly runs on good IT people, but there aren't enough to go around.
People around the age of 40 - 45 in this country come from a real boom for the IT industry - the introduction of the "home computer" - 8-bit microcomputers within the budget of the working citizen.
The perfect storm of kids TV that only lasted for an hour or so each day, and computers that came with a BASIC interpreter, and you needed to learn at least one BASIC command on to get them to do anything, created a gener
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2) I agree with most of what you've diagnosed, but I don't think this will solve it. This is too little too late to address the shortage of workers. In my year in A-Levels only one of my friends went on to do CS, the rest of us went in to other fields (despite some of my friends being very talented in, and enjoying that kind of thi
Re:Why the subsidy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm struggling to understand why this particular group of students should have such a heavily government subsidised education when they claim they can't afford it for the rest of us..
Isn't it obvious? We've got a general election in 6 months, and the guys currently in charge want to still be in charge in a year's time, so they want to be seen as the guys who did something to address the problem of unaffordable tuition fees, instead of the guys who caused the problem within months of the last election.
As for why computers, it's simply a way to give their regressive, exclusionist tactics an illusion of "progressivity". This is "real world" stuff rather than "ivory towers", so it's "economy". Yay for the world's oldest democracy.
"Duales Studium" in Germany (Score:1)
This concept is known as Duales Studium [wikipedia.org] in Germany and is quite well received by students and companies alike. (Keep in mind that university students normally don't pay tuition either in Germany, so that's not the important difference.)
Pay 2/3rds? (Score:2)
A couple of years back tuition fees were capped at around £3k/yr, the Conservative government (with the help of the Liberal Democrats who actually pledged to make university free like it is in most of Europe or even in other parts of the UK) raised the cap for universities to £9k/yr, effectively tripling the cost. Now they're saying you can pay £3k/yr if you take a job at the same time?
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Also I see they're saying that being in this style of apprenticeship shall earn you a wage. The current wages for apprentices are typically around £2.73/hr, just over 1/3rd of the minimum wage. It doesn't say if they're planning to pay a higher wage, but it does say on the government site that the apprentice will earn a wage. It's obviously used for cheap labour, ie/ https://jobsearch.direct.gov.u... [direct.gov.uk] or https://jobsearch.direct.gov.u... [direct.gov.uk] two simply picked off the first page from the jobcentre website.
Why the negativity (Score:2)
I don't understand all the negativity.
The student will gain as they will have a degree and work experience without the burden of the student loan. The company will have motivated staff with the training and qualifications that they want. The country will have productive members of society with the skills that are required in the industry
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I did a CS degree way back in the early 1980s. I was taught general computing principles and how to code in a few languages. The general principles, how to do analysis, etc. have given me a good grounding to learn other languages and techniques and keep my skills relevant. As long as the companies allow the students to continue to learn general principles, the why rather than the how, then this will be of benefit.
If the company has sufficient influence to make the course concentrate on the how that is most
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If the company has sufficient influence to make the course concentrate on the how that is most relevant to the company then this would be bad. They might as well just take the people on and forget the degree.
Ah no... that would cost the companies more. Don't you know that in the UK we pay our taxes so that companies don't have to...?
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Not sure why you (or indeed anyone) thinks this amounts to a degree; that normally takes three years full time study.
This, if it's anything, looks like a rehash of the old "day release" that used to lead to a HNC.
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Why is the government trying to help get students educated in CS. if this gap really exists then why don't I have a job in this field, I have an undergraduate degree, and the skills needed.
You're not supposed to ask that question. What are you, a communist? You might as well put insubordination on the resume. You should change your name to Mr. Smarty Pants. Radical Hippy Stoner Face experience.
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Indeed, if the gap really exists, then there would be a very good pay to be had for some lucky few that choose the right education. On the whole, I think that is not the case.
So pay close attention where calls of 'too little people trained in X' come from, usually it is someone who will profit from a surplus of them.
Repo Man (Score:3)
I love how the say they'll subsidize two thirds the cost of a tuition that they just tripled in recent years. I think its also crap how you can buy an imported car at times with nearly 1% APR, but an education that does not depreciate or get repossessed must not only accrue ridiculous finance fees, it now must also involve indentured servitude. The slavery might only last for a few years, but the loan will stay with you longer than you'll remember the curriculum. And that's how the smart and successful people channel their ambitions: serving master. Its a deal with the devil in the details. Slavery doesn't just grow on trees, ya know.
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I think its also crap how you can buy an imported car at times with nearly 1% APR, but an education that does not depreciate or get repossessed must not only accrue ridiculous finance fees, it now must also involve indentured servitude.
I believe you answered your own question: in case of default, a car can get repossessed and sold, an education can't. If you were in the lender's position, why would you lend money to students knowing they could default and walk away from the debt?
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I think its also crap how you can buy an imported car at times with nearly 1% APR, but an education that does not depreciate or get repossessed must not only accrue ridiculous finance fees, it now must also involve indentured servitude.
I believe you answered your own question: in case of default, a car can get repossessed and sold, an education can't. If you were in the lender's position, why would you lend money to students knowing they could default and walk away from the debt?
Its the only guaranteed loan in the business. There is no risk.
Affordable students (Score:1)
As a matter of fact it would be cheaper to hire qualified workers from emerging countries (Indian programmers, etc.).
For UK students who cannot pay his/her career, being waiter, cleaner and so on is not such a bad thing.
Just [partially] joking.
Now you have two problems (Score:4, Informative)
So, you're an employer who is short of skilled labour. You sign up to a scheme that requires the skilled personnel you do have, let's call her Nellie, to spend a significant fraction of her time training a school-leaver who's been told to sit next to her for three years. After three years the apprentice says 'Thanks for all the help, I've just been offered a nice job with another company.'. Only a C-level executive would think that this is going to work out well.
This sort of scheme has been tried before in the UK. For example, when there was a shortage of physics and maths teachers in schools a decade or so ago. Long story short, it was paying early career physics and maths teachers a bit more that fixed the problem.
What happens if you just make 'em work (Score:4, Interesting)
A step in the right direction (Score:2)
Similar scheme (Score:2)
Hypocrisy (Score:1)
Another example of a UK member of Parliament who went to university fully paid for by the state to present a "no brained" option to poorly informed 17-18 year olds (I.e. those who are put off by the "debt" built up under tne current student loan system, not realising that they will, in the majority of cases, pay back far less during their working lifetime then under the old loan system).
University is not just about learning new information to pass exams and obtain a degree, but is about providing a platform