Apprenticeships in Switzerland

Reason for this document

The apprenticeship or vocational training is a model that seems pretty unique to Switzerland and Germany. I have talked to a lot of people from other countries recently. But I have not been able to find anyone with this model in his country. So I decided to write a short document about this form of education.

The basic idea

The apprenticeship basically consists of two elements: Work and school and both elements are coordinated. For most apprenticeships school takes one day a week and work is the other four days. An apprenticeship usually takes between two and four years, depending on the job to be learned.

In order to protect the apprentice, there are some laws. For example the apprentice is not allowed to work long hours, it's very difficult to fire him, and his wage for all four years is fixed before the start of the training. Speaking of wage: first, in most professions, the apprentice earns some money. Usually the salary increases every year to reflect the reality that he knows more because of the training.

High schol

There is also the possibility to do vocational high school during the apprenticeship. This gives the apprentices the possibility to change to a vocational college after their training to get a degree.

How it works in practice

This model has some big advantages, but also several disadvantages. Some of the following points are taken from my own experience, others I have heard from friends. It's also quite computer-centered. So it probably only reflects part of the whole situation in Switzerland. If you disagree with any of the points, feel free to contact me by E-Mail.

Advantages

Probably the huge advantage over university education is that during the apprentice you not only learn your job from a theoretical point of view, but you do real work for real customers. This way you learn from the first year, that was is taught at school can sometimes contradict what is actually done in practice. I have actually seen quite some interns who did very well in all the theoretical exercises. But when it came down to writing some code, they were usually far too slow and often even took the wrong approach.

An additional good point about the apprenticeship is the money. While an apprentice does not earn as much as a real employee does (and rightly so), it's usually enough to support the apprentices basic needs. In my case it was even enough to live in my own apartment from the third year on with some financial help from my mother.

To summarize the advantages:

Disadvantages

Especially big companies put their apprentices in a special apprenticeship workshop. There they get special tasks which often do not come from real customers but are mock-up projects. This allows to predict in detail, what technologies the apprentice will learn during his training. But it hurts motivation, because often the projects are never really put in use after the creation. Additionally it gives the apprentices a sterile environment which is usually not what you have in real work.

The teachers are often of dubious quality. This might have to do with the fact, that they earn a lot more in the industry than when paid by the government (which is the case for the vocational schools). We had some really good teachers during our apprenticeship. Most of this really good ones were self-employed and worked at the vocational school for about 50% in order to have a steady income.

Passing the whole program can be quite easy. Many apprentices who come out after four years of programming classes do not actually know how to program. That's sometimes the school's fault (see above), but often also the apprentices'. But this people should definitely be filtered out during the tests or at least during the final examinations.

To summarize the disadvantages: