Uni vs Apprenticeship

I've just got an offer from PwC to work on their management consulting apprenticeship scheme, which I'm over the moon about! However, I have no idea whether to take the apprenticeship, or go to uni and study Business and Politics.
Any advice would be great!

You can do Uni at any time. Imagine you ditch this apprenticeship and hated Uni. Do a degree later on is my perspective, since you're over the moon about this position. There are also job prospects after your apprenticeship which is cool, as it's actual work experience. Anyhow, this is coming from someone who thinks apprenticeships are slave labour and pointless, just give us a damn job if you have a job to do, you know? But I think it'd be good for you because it'll get you into a career you seem to want.

Why is an apprenticeship slave labour? If someone is paid, say, £20k per year, gets a day at college to gain a useful education and has useful experience how is that a bad deal? I see plenty of apprenticeships advertised which would give you that.

They're 3.50 an hour usually. That's slave labour. College here and there is nothing, working for full wage also has its benefits. You want a job done, give me full wage. End of. It's a governmental ploy for cheap labour, and many corporations take advantage of it rather than actually pay people full wage. Just like 'work experience'. My ideology is polar opposite to yours, being that you're into business. I'd rather die haha.

Ok - those sound like crap jobs - plenty of decent schemes out there, especially for people with the grades to go to university.

They're 3.50 an hour usually. That's slave labour. College here and there is nothing, working for full wage also has its benefits. You want a job done, give me full wage. End of. It's a governmental ploy for cheap labour, and many corporations take advantage of it rather than actually pay people full wage. Just like 'work experience'. My ideology is polar opposite to yours, being that you're into business. I'd rather die haha.

What qualifications could you get on the PwC scheme?

After the first year apprentices are paid at the national minimum wage, at least - and some are paid more than that even in the first year. Some companies will have increasing salaries, particularly larger companies (like PwC) or longer apprenticeships. Given that after the two year apprenticeship they join the Grad Scheme cohort I'm sure salary nor progression is going to be an issue in this case.

Anyway, OP, as above in my post and others, you will get a fair bit out of this now, and university remains an option later - even if after 6 months you decide to ditch it. Bear in mind, if you go to get a degree you need to a) successfully apply to the degree and b) do well then c) successfully apply to a grad scheme such as the one this apprenticeship dovetails to. Currently to get into that, all you need to do is maintain their stipulated progression requirements, which are likely to be much more straightforward than the latter two parts of the degree process. You're two out of three steps to the same end goal on the path you're on currently, and can still go into the other path without "backtracking". The reverse is not true for the university pathway.

I would recommend you pursue the apprenticeship in the first instance, and then revisit these considerations later if you wish to. If anything, even if you finish the apprenticeship and work a couple years, but then want to progress more but require and MBA or similar - you can then pursue a degree and an MBA back to back, as you'll have both the relevant experience and (presumably) savings for the MBA. You're just skipping several attrition bottlenecks you would otherwise be facing this way.

From a career point of view, this makes sense - it's one of the biggest selling points of taking the apprenticeship. But I really can't shake the feeling that I'd be missing out on something by not going to university (while simultaneously thinking that the 'university experience' is ********). Plus, university feels like a 'now or never' thing for me - I can't see myself wanting to go to uni after 2 years of working, it'd be too weird

From a career point of view, this makes sense - it's one of the biggest selling points of taking the apprenticeship. But I really can't shake the feeling that I'd be missing out on something by not going to university (while simultaneously thinking that the 'university experience' is ********). Plus, university feels like a 'now or never' thing for me - I can't see myself wanting to go to uni after 2 years of working, it'd be too weird

I've just got an offer from PwC to work on their management consulting apprenticeship scheme, which I'm over the moon about! However, I have no idea whether to take the apprenticeship, or go to uni and study Business and Politics.
Any advice would be great!