Apprenticeships are one of the oldest forms of skills learning in all of human history. They’ve been common practice for a wide range of professions since the birth of civilisation, and it is only really fairly recently that the practice has been somewhat overtaken by modern-day higher education. Even so, an apprenticeship can give you the practical experiences you’ll need to succeed in a specific career in ways that a modern day education often fails people.
Apprenticeships true value comes from how you spend your period as an apprentice living and breathing in the environment that you will eventually find your own. This stands in contrast to a university degree, where you get a broader but less relevant education. The downside to them is
The downside to them is that they can also leave you with fewer options if you decide to move away into a slightly different career path, as the subject you’ve studied is geared precisely towards a specific skill-set and career.
Apprenticeships also have, in most cases, lower barriers to entry. They are able to do this because an apprenticeship isn’t designed to cost the business/individual any money. Over your time as an apprenticeship, a large portion of your time will be spent as what amounts to a low-paid assistant. On top of a relatively low pay, you are provided with training in the profession, so that at some point, after a few years, you are able to gain a qualification to carry out the job. Because of how this works, the loss a business experiences when somebody drops out of an apprenticeship is far lower than what it costs a school to provide a place for an education only to have somebody drop out.