Uni is not the only answer, apprenticeships deserve our support too - Susan Dalgety

As thousands of students get ready to start their university career this is perhaps a good time to ponder whether a degree in business management or political science is the best bet for the future.

Apprenticeships can offer a rewarding career

Higher education is the most popular destination for school leavers in Scotland, with around 40 per cent heading to university each year. Full time students make up 12 per cent of Edinburgh’s population. Even the cost of student accommodation – the highest in the UK according a survey by the Royal Bank of Scotland – doesn’t put them off coming to the Capital to study at one of our four universities.

But would many of those students be better off as apprentices? Learning practical skills as well as theory to prepare them for a lifetime of work, instead of spending four years cramming modules on marketing and organisational development? Unfortunately, there is a certain snobbishness about post-school destinations, not least among parents. A craft apprenticeship – in electrics or plumbing for example – is seen as a poor alternative to a degree in social sciences, yet what is more useful?

I get fed up with people’s attitudes to “white van” men – and increasingly women – and not just because most of my immediate family are in the construction trade or hospitality. Working on a complex building site requires a high level of knowledge, excellent project management skills and critical thinking – traits I have found severely lacking in many office environments. Yet people working from home on their laptop compiling spreadsheets are considered to have won the lottery of life, while gas fitters and joiners are the butt of jokes – until you need one.

I am not suggesting that fewer people go to university. It is a good thing that higher education is open to far more people than it was only a generation ago. But just as universities have been favoured by policy makers in recent years, the focus should now be on investment in further education and better support for small businesses which employ apprentices.

After all, more than half of school leavers will not be going to university in a few weeks’ time. Surely they deserve as much – if not more – public support than wannabe graduates.