Apprenticeship in Review 2018

The types and structures of youth apprenticeship vary across the country, and CESNA is a leader in conversations about what youth apprenticeship can and should be. In 2017, Brent Parton published a landscape analysis of youth apprenticeship programs in the United States, offering recommendations to spur future growth in high-quality apprenticeship opportunities for young people. In October 2018, New America and a group of national partners launched the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA). PAYA works to support the expansion of high-quality apprenticeships for young Americans, including opportunities to earn postsecondary credit and gain early career experience. Concurrent with the PAYA launch, organizations in the Partnership released a set of guiding principles for youth apprenticeship. Read more about the principles in Brent Parton’s post What is Youth Apprenticeship? Definition and Guiding Principles for High-Quality Programs.

To expand apprenticeship into new fields and recruit students in current fields, more and more partnerships between employers, intermediaries, and institutions of higher education are offering apprenticeship programs that integrate on-the-job learning and a degree program. In these degree-apprenticeships, participants get the benefits of the close, on-the-job mentorship that is the hallmark of apprenticeship combined with the benefits of a postsecondary degree.

Promising degree-apprenticeship programs are cropping up in fast-growing fields like nursing. In September, Mary Alice McCarthy and Ivy Love released Apprenticeship and the Future of Nursing, which discusses how apprenticeship provides a more affordable, equitable path to the bachelor’s degree for nurses who need it. The report highlights an apprenticeship for registered nurses at Fairview Health Services in Minnesota that culminates in a bachelor’s degree, the first program of its kind in the country.

While individual degree-apprenticeships are growing in popularity, a more systemic approach integrating higher education and apprenticeship could further scale the model. Mary Alice McCarthy, Iris Palmer, and Michael Prebil offer key strategies to do just that in Eight Recommendations for Connecting Apprenticeship and Higher Education. In addition to lifting up the degree-apprenticeship model, the authors advocate for a clear, legal definition of a “student-apprentice,” someone who meets both the criteria of a regular student for higher education purposes, and the legal definition of an apprentice. Such a definition could be a game changer for many, by allowing the creation of new policies to support student-apprentices and encouraging further higher education-employer apprenticeship partnerships to develop.

The benefits of apprenticeship include a clear path into a recognized occupation, low to no postsecondary debt, intensive professional mentorship, and more. Yet apprentices today are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male, meaning those who reap the rewards of apprenticeship don’t reflect the diversity of Americans who could benefit. Several CESNA pieces have focused on not just expanding the apprenticeship model, but expanding access to folks who are traditionally underrepresented among apprentices.

Vocational education at the secondary level has a dark history of “tracking” students – often low-income and minority students – away from college preparatory curriculum in favor of training for jobs unlikely to pay much. As Abigail Swisher wrote in Will the Ghost of Tracking’s Past Haunt Youth Apprenticeship’s Future?, it’s important to recognize and confront this history as youth apprenticeship opportunities become increasingly common for American high school students. Brent Parton wrote in Putting Equity at the Center of Youth Apprenticeship that stakeholders have a critical responsibility – and opportunity – to purposefully structure youth apprenticeships today to provide equitable, accessible, inclusive opportunities for young Americans of all identities. Most recently, the Apprenticeship Forward Collaborative, which New America co-leads with National Skills Coalition, placed a strong emphasis on equity and access in its Principles for Expanding Quality Apprenticeship.

Underrepresentation of women and people of color in apprenticeship is still common in programs for adults as well. While women currently comprise only seven percent of registered apprentices in the country, one federal grant program supports local stakeholders aiming to change that, as Ivy Love wrote in Everything You WANTO Know about Women in Apprenticeship. Justice-involved individuals may face a number of barriers after re-entering the community, but one innovative partnership in Missouri is supporting folks preparing to re enter the community with training for agricultural opportunities in rural southeast Missouri, as Ivy Love described in New Ag Apprenticeship Provides Support from Incarceration to Re-Entry in Missouri.

Needs and opportunities in apprenticeship expansion vary across states and regions. Partnerships among stakeholders may take different shape, and sectors with the highest need for workers may look different from city to city, and state to state.

In California, Sarah Jackson wrote that child care workers needing additional education and training are finding a pathway forward through apprenticeship, supporting a critical occupation for California families and communities. On the opposite coast, New Jersey is investing in apprenticeship expansion to benefit a growing number of state residents and local employers seeking new talent, as Lul Tesfai and Ivy Love explain in Apprenticeship’s Bright Future in the Northeast.

Though opportunities for apprenticeship in remote locations may take some creativity to develop, the model may be just what small towns and other rural locales need to boost economic opportunity, as Ivy Love wrote in Cultivating Rural Talent through Apprenticeship.

Polling commissioned by New America shows that Americans feel favorably toward apprenticeship, so much so that the majority of respondents believed the government should provide additional funding for apprenticeship, as Iris Palmer explains in What Americans Think of Apprenticeship. With both major political parties supportive of apprenticeship expansion, what principles can ensure programs are of high-quality and lead participants to success?

As the Trump administration’s Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion began its work, CESNA staff offered comments and recommendations to ensure equity and quality take center stage, including CESNA's First Reactions to Recommendations from the President's Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion by Mary Alice McCarthy, Brent Parton, Lul Tesfai, and Michael Prebil and Four Things for Trump's New Apprenticeship Task Force to Consider First by Brent Parton.