NEW - Earn your way to an Engineering Degree at IT Sligo

Work-based Degrees for young learners!

In September 2020, Institute of Technology Sligo accepted the first cohort of students onto its new, highly innovative, “Work-Based” degree in Engineering. This new degree combines our long experience in both online education and apprenticeships. In this course, the students will work for three years with a suitable employer for three days a week and study online for the other two, attending the Institute in Sligo only occasionally for laboratory work, much of which is also available online. 

This new course, in Mechatronic Systems Engineering, addresses several challenges that we have faced over the years in Engineering education, namely the lack of practical work experience of new graduates and the affordability of going to college for many families.  The programme is aimed at automation within Ireland’s high-end manufacturing sector and has support from employers who believe that this will be a more effective way of educating engineers. 

“Because we have employers signed up from all over Ireland and because the students can study online, students can not only earn money while in college they can also live at home reducing their expenses even further”, said Brian Mulligan, Head of Online Learning Innovation and the developer of this new course.  “We, and the employers we have worked with on this development, believe that this programme will produce better engineers.  We realise that there are many young people who are not particularly interested in going to college but realise that a degree is important.  Employers realise this too and feel that this will also attract more young people into engineering who are keen to get out working after their leaving certificate.  Currently the degree is at level 7 but we have been teaching follow on degrees online up to masters level for many years so there are no constraints on further study.” 

This is not the first venture for IT Sligo into work-based degrees.  IT Sligo first started part-time online degrees in 2002 and since then has had about 10,000 students through its virtual doors.   Now over half the institute’s 8,300 students study online.  As a leader in online learning in Ireland  IT Sligo  realised that it also had great potential for students completing their leaving certificate.  In 2016 the institute  launched the first of the new apprenticeships, an honours degree in Insurance Practice using the same method of teaching.

According to Jacqueline McCormack, Vice President of Online Development at IT Sligo, another advantage of this course is that it removes the stress of the leaving certificate from students.  “The key to getting into the course is to be offered a traineeship position with a suitable local employer, so it is more about being interested in a career in engineering and being able to convince an employer of that. Interested students can find an employer themselves or we can help them do that.  For that reason this course is only available through direct application and not available through the CAO.  We in IT Sligo believe that work-based degrees will be an important part of higher education in the future.” 

To get more information on this:

1. You can download a flyer on the course from here: bit.ly/itsligowbl
2. You can view a short presentation on the course webpage here: www.itsligo.ie/SG335 

 You can book a live "webinar" presentation or personal meeting here: https://bit.ly/wblwebinar

Interested employers and students should contact WBL Manager, Stephen Aitken at [email protected] for more information.