VI. Appendix

To learn more about the availability and characteristics of degree apprenticeships in the United States, we conducted a comprehensive search during summer 2025 that used multiple sources to try to identify institutions of higher education that offered degree apprenticeship opportunities.

We limited our analysis to Registered Apprenticeships and programs in which the degree is an essential part of the apprenticeship. Apprenticeships for America devised a useful typology of degree apprenticeship programs¹ that is helpful in clarifying the kinds of programs we sought for our landscape analysis and qualitative research:

• In an apprenticeship-integrated degree program, the apprenticeship and degree programs occur concurrently and conclude at the same time.
• In an apprenticeship-staggered degree program, students enroll in the degree program first and then enter the apprenticeship later. Sometimes both the degree and apprenticeship conclude at the same time, and sometimes the apprenticeship continues after the degree is earned.
• An apprenticeship-embedded degree program is competency-based, in which all or a portion of the college course competencies are integrated in the on-the-job learning.

We included all three of these types of degree apprenticeships in our search and analysis. We did not include a fourth type of degree apprenticeship in the typology, apprenticeship-linked degrees, in which related instruction is credit-based but only covers a portion of degree requirements and the learner has the option of completing the degree later, outside of the apprenticeship. While we see great value in apprenticeship-linked degree programs, we do not consider them to be degree apprenticeships.

To identify degree apprenticeship opportunities:

• We began with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Database System (RAPIDS). Variables identifying the related technical instruction provider for Registered Apprenticeship programs were not available in the data we were able to access. Searching for programs for which a sponsor was an institution of higher education and the target occupation typically requires a degree proved less than fruitful because of missing data.
• We contacted the directors of state apprenticeship agencies (SAAs) and, for states where the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship oversees apprenticeships, the OA staff responsible for those states.
• We reviewed recent literature on degree apprenticeships, such as the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform (CEEDAR) Center’s Database of Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Programs Leading to Special Education Licensure,² Education Trust’s “Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Programs: A 50-State Scan,”³ and An Untapped Opportunity: Registered Apprenticeship at Minority Serving Institutions by the Rutgers Graduate School of Education’s Center for MSIs.⁴ We included degree apprenticeships identified in these publications that we were able to confirm with a second source.
• Using the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS),⁵ we identified 1,555 public and private nonprofit institutions of higher education that awarded associate degrees in occupational fields⁶ in 2022–2023.⁷ We visited the website of each institution, searched its contents using the terms apprentice and apprenticeship, and reviewed the information identified by the search. We focused on program catalogs from the most recent year available, but we also reviewed news releases and announcements published in the last three years, and other information retrieved using the search terms.
• Using Google, we conducted a series of internet searches and reviewed the first 200 items retrieved using the name of each state and the District of Columbia along with the following sets of search terms: (1) apprentice, apprenticeship, and degree; (2) apprentice, apprenticeship, associate, and associate degree; (3) apprentice, apprenticeship, and bachelor’s; (3) apprentice, apprenticeship, and nurse; and (4) apprentice, apprenticeship, and teacher.

We excluded from our inventory opportunities that were not consistent with our definition of degree apprenticeship. For example, because they do not award a degree, we excluded teacher apprenticeships that are alternative, non-degree pathways that enable prospective teachers with a bachelor’s or master’s degree outside the field of education to meet certain state teacher certification or licensure requirements. We excluded all degree apprenticeship opportunities that we could not verify were Registered Apprenticeships using the Office of Apprenticeship’s Apprenticeship Partner Finder⁸ and lists of Registered Apprenticeships published by SAAs.

After identifying the 579 opportunities, we manually coded them by occupation with detailed Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system codes using the SOC-CIP Crosswalk produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics.⁹ We also retrieved data on the characteristics and locations of the institutions of higher education with degree apprenticeship opportunities from IPEDS.

Our search strategies, while comprehensive, have clear limitations. Information on the websites of colleges and universities about degree apprenticeships is not always clear and straightforward, may be outdated, and may not fully document all of the degree apprenticeship opportunities on offer. Identifying all of the institutions of higher education offering degree apprenticeship opportunities for prospective teachers was particularly challenging in some states where these programs are selected by individual school districts from among the universe of all state-approved educator preparation programs. The field of degree apprenticeships is also rapidly evolving. Finally, our inventory only identifies opportunities for degree apprenticeships; we were not able to collect information on the extent to which student-apprentices are taking advantage of these opportunities.

But even with these limitations, our inventory provides a useful starting point for understanding the current extent of degree apprenticeships, the institutions offering them and their characteristics, and areas for further exploration through case studies and other research.