[l1ambda]

You used to be able to apprentice for just about any profession at all, often earning money while doing so. Perhaps social norms need to adjust and bring back apprenticeship. Perhaps we are on that course now having reached the tipping point of student loan debt and with the death of the 4 year degree.

Education is free (MIT has free courses, and there are lots of opportunities nowadays for self-study); it's a degree that's expensive.

[realo]

Hi. Old grumpy engineer here.

Most young people we hire straight out of the university are at about the level of “apprentice” anyway.

The best just learn faster later on.

The university degree in E.E. is just a ticket to being apprentice somewhere.

[walshemj]

Not really apprenticeship's tended to be only for skilled trades and technicians and where designed for the working class kids who left school at 14-16

Not sure degrading the status of the "professional" jobs we do is going to help even more so now that Walmart and co are taking the piss by abusing apprenticeship's to get cheap shelfstackers.

In some countries used to be all but impossible for those on the apprentice track to go to university at all (Germany and Austria for example)