Having major second thoughts about apprenticeships and uni

Where did you read the stuff about financial penalties on degree apprenticeships? It would be worth getting in touch with the college/university to query those.

Degree-apprenticeship schemes are already paid-for through substantial sums of UK Govt funding (and you certainly don't need to pay anything back to the Government for it), so by imposing any kinds of financial penalties it sounds like they're breaking the terms of that funding. Whichever college or university is supporting that apprenticeship should be taking some action to prevent them from doing this, because that kind of thing generally isn't allowed for government-funded training schemes.

The scheme comes with a levy that requires you to pay a maximum of £6,000 if you drop out;

> If your employment comes to an end for whatever reason during the four-year scheme or up to 6 months after, 100% of the non-levy shortfall paid for your course and examination fees incurred at your leaving date will be repayable.
> If your employment comes to an end within 6 to 12 months of the scheme completion date, 75% of the non-levy, shortfall paid for your course and examination fees incurred at your leaving date will be repayable.
> If your employment comes to an end within 12 to 18 months of the scheme completion date, 50% of the non –levy shortfall paid for your course and examination fees incurred at your leaving date will be repayable.
> If your employment comes to and end within 18 to 24 months from the completion date, 25% of the non-levy shortfall paid for your course and examination fees incurred at your leaving date will be repayable.
> The only exception to this is if your role was affected by redundancy, in which no reclamation would be made.

This can run up to a maximum of 5 years and, whilst £6,000 may not seem too much in the grand scheme of things, it is not something that I can afford in the short term.

P63. To use funds in the employer’s digital account or government-employer co-investment, the individual must:
P63.4. Not be asked to contribute financially to the cost of training, on-programme or end-point assessment. This includes both where the individual has completed the programme successfully and has left the programme early. Costs include any co-investment or additional training and assessment costs, above the funding band, that the employer has paid directly to the main provider where this is part of the agreed apprenticeship

My biggest concern is whether option 1 will be enjoyable. It is the most obvious and sensible choice, but I will be working full time, and I don't particularly think I'm ready for that.

Tagging @National Apprenticeship Service / @National Apprenticeships Service -- any Ideas on this? I'm pretty sure that's not allowed for a degree apprenticeship, bur might be missing something? I found this which seems pretty clear though:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/786465/apprenticeship_funding_rules_for_training_providers_August_2018_to_July_2019_version_2.pdf

On this note, I think that's going to be a matter of finding out more about it - but if you apply for it and get to the interview then you'll have the opportunity to learn more about the job and their expectations, what the workload is typically like, and ask any other questions about things you're unsure of.

Employers should expect you to learn quite a lot reasonably quickly, but they're not going to risk throwing you into any projects with tight deadlines in the first few months at least because they'll know that you're going to need plenty of time and space to reach a point where you'll be able to cope with that, and you'd normally be working in a team of people where everyone has collective responsibility for getting work done, so it's unlikely that you'd ever just be left alone with anything that's actually important like a customer project.

Normally the degree-apprenticeship wouldn't quite be the same as full-time employment since there's generally 4 days per-week at the employer and 1 day per-week in lessons, but obviously from a point of view of how many hours you'd be doing per week it's always going to be more intense than university.

Not that studying for a degree at university is "easy" -- you have fewer contact hours but still work to do in your own time, and one of the upsides (in my opinion) of working full-time is that you get to 5.30pm at work every day and then you can just walk away and switch off from work without needing to worry about it until 9am the next morning, no need to worry about having to do any work at weekends, etc. Sometimes studying can be a little bit all-encompassing and harder to switch off if you're under a mountain of coursework; although you get nice long breaks as well and a generally more relaxed lifestyle most of the year except around exam times and near big coursework deadlines. Both options can be tough/intense in their own different ways.

The penalty is imposed only when dropping out, again to quote the Apprentice Funding Agreement directly;

"should the company be required to top up any shortfall between the levy funding and the actual costs of the qualification, then we reserve the right to claim back our contribution, (currently capped at a maximum of £6,000), if the apprentice leaves our employment as below."

I think it's also worth mentioning that I am quite far through the application process for both the apprenticeships, especially option one. Option one itself is with MBDA, who specialize in weaponized missile systems. This is another concern I have, I think that working there would be very intense given the nature of the work. The other is with CGI, and they haven't been very clear about the application process at all. I had an interview with Makers Academy (the people who run the HNC course) at the start of May, and all I've had since then is that my application is being processed and that they apologise for the delay.

I've emailed Swansea uni as they have already started advertising clearing places, so I guess I'll see what happens.