Apprentices are becoming a more attractive prospect to students looking for a different way of gaining a career. With the 2012 increase in tuition fees and no guarantees that this fee will not increase in the future students are looking into alternatives to university.
A report has been commissioned by the Association of Accounting Technicians, AAT, to coincide with National Apprenticeship week. Within the travel and leisure sector, 77% of businesses think that more people are starting to explore different routes into employment over the next five years. The generation of young people looking into employment has observed older generations pay more and more to go to university, which could have potentially deterred a lot of people from looking into that career path from a young age. This opens the door for other opportunities such as apprenticeships.
The AAT has uncovered that 76% of businesses in travel and leisure, when looking into recruiting for entry level positions, do not look for candidates with a degree. This is a sector already geared towards the potential change in education choice. According to the report it is more necessary for the candidates to have the right attitude and enough relevant work experience within the industry, something that at the minute is not widely offered.
Work experience is one of the big selling points of apprenticeships, being able to earn and work alongside learning can provide connections as well as workplace experience. 39% of travel and leisure businesses believe that work experience will always be more important than a specific education. Only 4% of those businesses involved in the study believed in the opposite of this.
AAT is supporting the Government’s attempt to increase the engagement with apprenticeships, and hope that the scope for apprenticeships should be widened to allow further future investments in traineeships and other training.
