McQualifications prove popular option for 2500 staff
May 13, 2009
Over a year ago there was a big news story about McDonalds being accredited to offer qualifications equivalent to an A Level (See McQualifications – the new A levels? 6th Feb 08) as well as Network Rail and Flybe. This development was designed to give young people the chance to gain work based skills that they could not get in the formal education system – such as a ‘basic shift manager’ diploma. The qualifications can be used as credits to help people to get onto higher education courses, although many of the more high level universities immediately criticised the qualifications as not being as rigorous academically as the traditional A level, and some even said that they would not accept the work-based qualifications as credits for entry onto their degree courses.
However, despite some of the negative points relating to the new qualifications, McDonalds have announced that 2,500 members of staff enrolled for their A level equivalent courses – which shows that a lot of people see credibility in the scheme, rather than showing the same snobbery as some university heads. Many of the applicants for the scheme were actually university graduates, that are looking for a practical element to their learning experience; which is what a lot of graduates seek after spending three or more years drowning in academia that can prove to be almost useless in the reality of the workplace. And at the moment this is an even more attractive proposition; with new graduates struggling to find work in the recession; as research has shown that graduate positions in 2009 have been cut by 17%. A friend of mine who lives in London has been affected by this; having graduated last year, he has still been unable to find a decent job and said that graduate recruitment London has reduced massively and is extremely competitive.
David Fairhurst, the head of HR at McDonalds, has said that one day he’d love to be able to offer degree level and even Phd courses in restaurant management, and I don’t think this is a completely unrealistic dream, since there are no university courses of this kind, and therefore a lack of opportunity to learn at the higher level within a lot of careers.
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