I'm over £80k in student debt - our apprentice will be making money

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I made the mistake of checking my student loan debt last week – it’s now over £80,000. I graduated less than 10 years ago, with about £52,000 debt, so that’s a lot of interest. 

Helpfully, my psychology degree from the University of York has resulted in jobs where my wage is so low I often haven’t met the repayment threshold.

It’s the same old story – young people with absurd loans that are both crippling and never going to be repaid (Lord knows what will happen when they all start getting written off in 17 years).

Only half way through my degree did I decide I wanted to be a journalist – and I soon discovered it would cost me another £4,000 (£6,250 if I did it now) to do my NCTJ qualification over six months in London.

I was lucky enough to have some money left to me by my grannie, so I used that to pay all my costs for those months – but many people won’t be so fortunate.

That’s one of the most amazing things about the Stray Ferret’s offer to put a local young person through a journalism apprenticeship. It will allow anyone with the talent – no matter their financial circumstances – to become a journalist. 

Not only will they not have to pay the course fees (the government funds that), but they will get paid a wage by the Stray Ferret, working four days a week in our newsroom. 

Given they’ll be a local person, they could very easily live at home and put all that money into savings (or spend it on having fun)! They’ll be much better off than I was at least; paying for a course, working for free and paying London rent.

By working in the newsroom, our apprentice will be able to apply what they’ve learnt straight away, as well as be mentored by the Stray Ferret team who have a combined 127 years of journalism experience (I was told not to admit to that, it makes us all sound very old). 

Having worked as a journalist for a comparatively measly four years, I have benefitted immensely since I started at the Stray Ferret from the wisdom of my co-workers.

Perhaps most importantly, the apprentice will complete their training and have good job prospects at the end of it, with a great portfolio of work. 

The journalism world was hard enough to break into back in 2019 – I think I went to about 12 job interviews (not to mention all the applications) before getting a position, and that was before the job market really went downhill. As we’re constantly told stories about Oxbridge graduates not finding jobs, and McDonalds getting 3,000 applications for one job, that’s not something to be sniffed at.  

Alas, I don’t have a time machine to go back and do a journalism apprenticeship at the Stray Ferret (it didn’t exist all those years ago anyway) – but if I could, I would. It would have been so fantastic to train for my dream job while being paid – and that is exactly what we’re offering now.

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