Lessons from Community College Apprenticeship Intermediaries

All of these intermediaries attributed their success in part to their willingness to be flexible and adaptable, recognizing that designing a robust program takes patience and requires cycles of continuous change and improvement. People we spoke to said colleges needed to be ready to adapt and rethink programming based on both student and workforce needs, and to find alignment between the two, using flexibility in curriculum design, delivery methods, and program structure.

People at these colleges also noted the importance of effective collaboration and communication with industry partners, governmental bodies, and other stakeholder organizations. Colleges found champions within these groups, and leveraged these relationships to advocate for, design, fund, and execute effective apprenticeship programs.

These relationships were also key in helping to ensure sustainable funding for programs, another critical component. Creating robust cost models for apprenticeship programs at community colleges can be tricky. Relying on grant funding is risky, so many colleges rely on employers to sponsor programs to avoid placing financial burden on students. Pricing these programs to cover the administrative costs of the intermediary role is something that many colleges miscalculate, and so planning and developing thoughtful cost models can help ensure programs are sustainable in the long run.

Apprenticeship intermediaries play a key role in balancing the needs of employers and apprentices. Community colleges are uniquely suited to do this because of their overlapping missions in training, workforce, and economic development as well as their experience serving diverse students. However, employers are the critical partners. If their needs are not being met, there will be no demand to hire and programs will fall apart. We saw this in the cybersecurity case study where the program managed by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs fell apart in the absence of employer demand. San Jacinto College, which has robust IT apprenticeships, has only placed two in cybersecurity.

Employers can also be critical at helping to advocate for legislative changes in industries with licensing or other barriers. For instance, in Alabama, employer voices drove the legislative change that allowed nursing apprentices to get paid for their on-the-job training before they were fully licensed.

Other community partners can also strengthen that connection with employers. In the ApprenticeshipNH case study, the community college system does not serve as the sponsor, even though it supports and provides many of the traditional sponsorship roles. Instead, it leaves that official role to employers, unions, or industry associations. In Colorado, Arapahoe Community College partnered with a nonprofit intermediary with a history of work in cybersecurity and IT apprenticeships for insight into the complicated world of cybersecurity apprenticeship. This helped the school make its pitches to employers precise and actionable, yielding occupational templates that can be adjusted to fit employers’ needs.

Nontraditional apprenticeships—like nursing and cybersecurity—can warrant a more active community college intermediary role because the occupations require academic credentials to get and keep a job. Creating apprenticeships that work in these occupations can be a challenge. In health care programs like nursing, licensure restrictions as well as programmatic accreditation requirements, and a shortage of mentors can cause hurdles. In cybersecurity, the challenges are compounded by the need for security clearances, a lack of tasks that can be used for training, and extremely stringent requirements for people wanting to be apprentices.

Community colleges acting as intermediaries can reduce financial burden on students who want to train by tapping into a range of public funding options. For instance, the apprenticeship programs in Alabama can use federal and state financial aid, with employers picking up the tab after that subsidy. At Howard Community College in Maryland, apprentices can use AT&T’s employer tuition assistance program, which is available because of a special tax break for up to $5,000 a year in tuition support for employees. Community college intermediaries can also reduce training and recruitment costs for employers, making it more attractive for them to invest and engage.

But to be an intermediary, community colleges also need some dedicated funding, which is hard to come by. Many of the case studies in this paper were started and are currently run by grants from the Department of Labor. In New Hampshire, ApprenticeshipNH has received five DOL grants totaling almost $13 million, and the state has no plan to fund the infrastructure if and when federal money runs out. At the institutional level, some colleges are self-funding to sustain the apprenticeship capacity. Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, for example, has seen a return on investment and is investing general funds in staff support for apprenticeship programs.

State and system policy plays a key role in supporting community colleges as apprenticeship intermediaries. In New Hampshire, the community college system took on a statewide coordinating role that remains instrumental in expanding apprenticeship statewide. In Colorado, the governor and the state’s Department of Labor and Employment have provided leadership and encouragement for nontraditional apprenticeship expansion, including through partnership with higher education institutions. This helped the Colorado Community College System secure its grant for IT apprenticeships from the U.S. Department of Labor and led to the sub-grant that Arapahoe Community College received. Alabama’s last-dollar scholarship policy helps support for-credit apprenticeship by having employers cover tuition after financial aid is applied. And the state’s willingness to take on requirements for scope of practice in pre-licensure training allowed its community colleges a clear way to create thriving nursing apprenticeships.