licence en alternance

20:56 Dec 19, 2018 

This is the point that I was making. Sandwich course is definitely a UK English term, but I agree with Eliza, using this in this situation risks misleading readers, who will know it to comprise a gap year of study. There is no evidence in Joanna's information that this course in her source text comprises of one gap year or that it is structured as per our UK sandwich courses generally are/were.

20:35 Dec 19, 2018 

That's really useful to have had personal experience of the system.

17:53 Dec 19, 2018 

I actually did a sandwich course in the UK (3-year BA +1 year in France). I agree with you that they are not the same as apprenticeship courses -- but they're also not the same as the license en alternance that Joanna asked about.

Sandwich courses don't even necessarily involve any work at all. Most of the students on my sandwich course spent their gap year studying at French universities on the Erasmus program, not working. The only thing that's true of all UK "sandwich" courses is that you take time off -- usually an entire year off -- from your UK coursework and thus you graduate a year later than you would on an equivalent non-sandwich course.

Joanna's course has multiple short periods off from coursework, they're all used for professional work, and they don't delay the graduation date. It's not the same thing as a UK sandwich course, so that translation would be misleading.

23:21 Dec 17, 2018 

I think its irrelevant how long sandwich courses have been going in UK, but while looking back into the history of this sort of course, they were originally given that name due to the one year of work that was "sandwiched" between two years of study. Alternating your course with periods of work does not necessarily mean that it is a "sandwich" course, which has always meant exactly that, a "sandwich" of study/work. "work-based" is a very general term and does not imply that the structure is specifically organised in any particular way, which IMO was a lot safer to use given the lack of information available.

17:25 Dec 17, 2018 

The Asker told us "This is for the UK". Sandwich courses are very common in the UK and they are not all "degree apprenticeships". The latter are very new and quite unfamiliar to most people, whereas sandwich courses and sandwich degrees have been going for donkey's years. In fact, this website thought they needed to explain what a "degree apprenticeship" was by saying it's "in a sandwich course format" https://www.ec-nantes.fr/degree-apprenticeship/degree-appren... The difference with a "degree apprenticeship" seems to be that there is more employer input into the design of the course than with an ordinary sandwich degree. A work-based degree has a larger element of time in employment than a sandwich degree. They were originally brought in for teaching quals to cope with the shortage of teachers and a as a political initiative by Conservatives to counter what they thought was a left-wing bias in teacher education. So, they wanted to minimise the formal academic input.

15:39 Dec 17, 2018 

I don't think the "sandwich filling" needs to last a year to be called a sandwich course, but when you've got more than one or max 2 layers of "filling" (work), it's less like a sandwich and more like a millefeuille! If you say "sandwich" no one is going to understand that the student regularly alternates between a few weeks of work and a few weeks of class, repeatedly, for years.

In the US programs like this are typically called "cooperative programs" -- the concept is cooperation between school and the professional world to permit students to alternate between the two. Such programs can be at the undergraduate level ("Cooperative Education": https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/find-colleges/academic-li... or graduate (e.g., a friend of mine got her law degree through a "Cooperative Legal Education Program" here: https://www.northeastern.edu/law/admission/jd/index.html

Lara has also noted in her answer below that it can be called "work-based" in the UK. They could also be called apprenticeship degrees: https://www.ucas.com/alternatives/apprenticeships/apprentice...

14:18 Dec 17, 2018 

As you will see from my own entry, one of my links includes a link to a page that explains what "formation en alternance" is, which IMO is the key to this term:

https://groupecerco.com/wp/bj/formation-alternance-bi-licenc...

Therefore, if you opt for any of the posted answers, your best choice would depend on whether you believe this course is one year of work sandwiched between two study years, or whether it is a continually alternating program over the course of the study, for which my suggestion (which is quite general to avoid mis-translation) may or may not be of interest to you.

15:44 Dec 16, 2018 

Hi Lara, unfortunately that is all the information given.

15:50 Dec 15, 2018 

Is there any further description of this part of the record?