Powetrain Degree Apprentice Review

I work in design, day to day I design components on Catia (CAD) and have meetings with departments to decide what they want from a CAD model of their part. I spend a lot of time working with others in the team designing systems which will work for everyone so our parts work together.

I have become much more confident on CAD. But other than that very little has changed, the College is meant to prepare you for university in the 3 year but from what I've learned from the years above the University teaches everything the college teaches again because of the poor performance of the college. Hopefully ill learn more when i move onto university.

For the first year college is full time with time at work limited to midterms, the second year is spent mostly at work with one day in college. College is by far the worst part of the apprenticeship, overall it drags it from a score of 8 to a 2

The colleges Organisation is abysmal, they lectures they have are barely qualified in the subjects they teach never mind being qualified enough to teach them. The overall organisation on the Companies side of things is pretty good, they have been doing this long enough now to know what to do.

The company is very supportive, they help with any issues from the education provider. We all have regular meetings with our managers to discuss our performance and how we can improve. There is also a specific department set up within the company to cater to apprentice need regardless of level.

Support from College is shockingly bad, the lecturers seem like they don't really care if you pass or fail they just talk at the front and if you don't understand or ask a question they say you should already know the answer and then move on. To be fair not all lecturers are exactly like this but from my experience its more often than not the case.

Nothing I have done at College to date has in any way benefited my job, the job role I have doesn't require any qualifications past A levels so students could easily do it. The subjects we do at college seem to be randomly selected and some aren't even relevant or necessary for the qualifications we gain.

There are some but they are difficult to find and because its a large company and spread over a large area some of the activities can be very far away which discourages people from taking part. There are a lot of networking opportunities though as work moves quite quickly and you constantly work with new people.

Yes

The pay is very good as there are regular pay increases assuming satisfactory performance, the company is fairly good to the employees and obviously as part of the Degree Apprenticeship Programme you will get a degree paid for from the University of Warwick. As well as this you get discount on company products.

It is a long apprenticeship, before you start remember that. It can also be stressful at times as you may struggle to complete the college work with virtually no support. On the other hand you will get a degree and invaluable work experience, no one who goes to Uni straight away gets that.