On Wednesday 03 July 2013 08:44 soup wrote in uk.d-i-y:

ARW wrote:
They will rise from £2.65 per hour to £2.68 per hour. That's a whole
£1.20 a week extra for working a 40 hour week.

Would you still want your child to take an apprenticeship?

Yep .
In fact eldest son is an apprentice mechanic, he is in his fourth
year (no more college, "yay" qouth he). We have already had people ask
him for advice/look things over etc . He will also be a (relatively,
more than the dole/dead end job) high earner when he is fully 'time
served'.


Living at home[1] he has electricity/food etc supplied he gives his
mum digs (the amount is unknown to me but it is nothing like JHGs
numbers). Indeed he has enough 'spare' to run a small car (of course
he maintains/services and diagnoses any problems with it himself using
his spare time but the employers ramp etc).

[1] Fully understand not all 20 year olds can/want to live at home

If I were 16 now, I would be giving serious second thoughts to going to
university with the extorninate costs involved. Assuming I knew I was handy
with computers, I would probaby consider apprenticing with a company that
did something with networking, datacenters or similar. Then I would find out
what, if any, university course was likely to be a net benefit to me (ie
lead to good payback in terms of work and was in demand).

I would also make sure I had relevant summer jobs booked for which prior
work experience would probably go a long way to securing.

Back in the 80's, I went to uni because I had the A-levels and there was no
reason not to (effectively free). As it happened I did a course (physics)
that seemed easy at school but was actually not suited to me at a higher
level (computing and electronics would have been).

The only use my degree is is in passing the fairly arbitrary "must have a
numerate degree" that most of my university posts require. I have never used
anything beyond A Level maths and physics for anything in the real world.

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

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