Earn and Learn Apprenticeships Create Opportunity for Young People
National Apprenticeship Day Is April 30
“Everyone wants to hire somebody with three years’ experience, and nobody wants to give them three years’ experience,” says Peter Capelli, management professor at The Wharton School. Many first-time job seekers confront this mismatch between work requirements and their ability to apply what they know to those demands. Analysts call this problem the job seeker’s experience gap.
K-12 schools, two- and four-year colleges, and workforce training programs can help young people overcome the experience gap through earn-and-learn apprenticeship programs. In addition to long-standing registered apprenticeships, new models are emerging, including youth apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and apprenticeship degrees. National Apprenticeship Day is an opportunity to investigate this growing movement.
The Growing World of Apprenticeships
Registered Apprenticeships: The National Apprenticeship Act of 1937 established the U.S. government's authority to register and oversee apprenticeship programs while also giving states the option to do this. Today, about half the states do so.
These registered apprenticeship programs (RAPs) provide individuals, typically adults, with classroom instruction and paid on-the-job training. Participants who complete the program are awarded a nationally recognized credential that verifies their occupational proficiency. RAPs are time-based, competency-based, and hybrid.
Time-based programs are mostly for construction programs. Apprentices complete a minimum of 2,000 hours pursuing a program's learning objectives. Competency-based programs are flexible. Apprentices move at different paces through programs depending on previous education and experience. Hybrid programs combine time- and competency-based models, with apprentices demonstrating competencies within a flexible time period.
An evaluation of the Department of Labor's American Apprenticeship Initiative found that participant earnings typically increased by 49% between the year before their apprenticeship began and the year following its conclusion. This was regardless of the occupation or the person's demographic background.
The U.S. has 27,000 RAPs that enroll almost 600,000 individuals, or only 0.4% of the U.S. workforce. Countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada enroll an average of eight times as many apprenticeships as a percentage of their workforces. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland enroll up to 15 times as many. The U.S. has the lowest apprenticeship enrollment numbers in the developed world.
Additionally, American apprenticeship programs focus heavily on construction trades. Other nations train apprentices for a range of careers, including those in the health care, logistics, technology, and financial industries.
Youth apprenticeships: This earn-and-learn approach is typically part of a young person's high-school experience. Unlike RAPs, youth apprenticeships have no federal definition. The think tank New America is leading a national effort to expand youth apprenticeships. It has a working definition of such programs, which is similar to federally registered apprenticeships, with important differences.
One difference is that youth apprenticeships distribute classroom instruction across high schools, post-secondary institutions, and employers that partner with schools. Some programs, like those in Wisconsin, create a seamless pathway to a registered apprenticeship.
Another distinct feature of youth apprenticeships is that programs are available in fields like advanced manufacturing, information technology, and logistics rather than construction. North Carolina's program offers 15 youth-apprenticeship career pathways, including early childhood education, veterinary work, and drone piloting.
Some states, like Oregon and Washington, also have pre-apprenticeship programs, which typically last between a week and three months. These programs prepare individuals for entry into registered apprenticeships or other job opportunities.
Apprenticeship degrees: This earn-and-learn approach allows individuals to be apprentices and earn a college degree at the same time. The United Kingdom has developed such an approach, which leads to a debt-free bachelor's or master's degree from a collaborating university.
This degree-granting model is being adapted to U.S. teacher training. The non-profit Reach University, which comprises Reach Teachers College and the Graduate Institute, aims to create debt-free teacher apprenticeships that award bachelor's and master's degrees.
The University offers five degree and certificate programs in partnership with more than 180 schools. The federal Pell grant typically covers most of the program's costs, with a student contribution capped at $900 a year. Philanthropy or Department of Labor apprenticeship funds cover the balance.
Today, over 100 K-12 teacher apprenticeship programs are registered. More than 3,000 K-12 teacher apprentices have been trained.
A final type of apprenticeship-degree program offers colleges the option to "unbundle" the four-year degree into building blocks, or stackable credentials, earned while working. An apprentice can choose to proceed along one of several designated pathways leading to a degree.
Creating More Apprenticeship Programs
Ryan Craig, author of Apprentice Nation, suggests that new third-party organizations called "apprenticeship intermediaries" will be central to the U.S. effort to expand apprenticeship programs. These intermediaries can be public, non-profit, or for-profit organizations that work locally, regionally, statewide, or nationally, including community colleges, chambers of commerce, or commercial staffing companies
These intermediaries can create, run, and pay the up-front costs of apprenticeships, acting as go-betweens and points of contact for all the partners involved in the program. Companies can then "try before they buy" an apprentice and pay a fee to the intermediary for recruiting, training, and matching employees with firms.
In 2022, California created the nation's first state-based funding formula for apprenticeships, where intermediaries get paid for every apprentice they hire and train. To be successful, any effort to expand apprenticeship programs will have to brand and market them as effective pathways to jobs and opportunity.
An Opportunity Program
The earn-and-learn apprenticeship approach allows individuals to pursue varied pathways to a career. By valuing both educational and employment outcomes, the nation's opportunity structure becomes more flexible and pluralistic.
Apprenticeship programs help young people gain a greater understanding of their own interests, values, and abilities by "trying on" different careers. On a practical level, they create faster and cheaper pathways to jobs.
This moves the locus of learning to the classroom and the workplace. This is good news for job seekers as they overcome the experience gap. And it is worth celebrating on National Apprenticeship Day.
