What can you build on top of the apprenticeship certificate?
Further and continuing education — from short courses to design, management, and self-employment
When you have your journeyman certificate you are not done learning – you just have a solid foundation to build on. A craft like this develops all the time and the best in the trade keep getting better. Fortunately there are several directions to go depending on whether you want deeper into the craft broader out towards design and business or higher up in the education system.
§Keep skills sharp
Short follow-up courses are an easy way to stay current. They can be about new techniques materials tools or refreshing something you don't use daily. Such courses fit well while working because they are short and targeted.
§Specialize deeper
You can also choose to become even better within one field — for example setting, chasing, or a particular silversmith area. A clear specialization can make you the one other workshops send difficult tasks to, and it can become your niche business.
§Towards design and business
If you want to work more with the creative or business side, you can build further in the direction of design, product development and entrepreneurship. For many, the dream is to make their own jewelry under their own name — and that requires just as much business sense about customers, sales, marketing and economics as about the craft itself.
§Further in the education system
A vocational apprenticeship is not a dead end with respect to further education. With a skilled background and possible supplementing the path may be open to shorter higher education within design technology or management. If you have already taken the education as EUX you have a study-qualifying foundation that makes it easier to pursue further.
- 01Short courses: keep your skills and knowledge up to date while you work.
- 02Professional deepening: become a specialist in a specific technique.
- 03Design and entrepreneurship: build your own brand or workshop.
- 04Higher education: use the skilled foundation — particularly strong with EUX.
§Make a plan but keep it open
You don't need to know everything about your future in advance. Many find out which way to go only after standing in the trade for a couple of years. What matters is that you know the opportunities exist — so you can seize them when the desire or need arises.