Preparing young people for the workforce -- even if they don't earn a college degree -- is a priority for Democrats (83 percent) and Republicans (88 percent), according to a survey by PDK, an educators' group. It's one of the few bipartisan education issues, along with hiring and retaining good teachers, reports Linda Jacobson on The 74.
But creating viable non-college career paths is the kind of thing that that gets mentioned in party platforms and governors' state of the state speeches, yet never goes to scale.
Could that change?
Indiana government, business and education officials are trying to create a Swiss-style apprenticeship system, reports Patrick O’Donnell on The 74. With funding and leadership from the Fairbanks Foundation, they're working with the Center on the Economics and Management of Education and Training Systems (CEMETS) at ETH Zurich. The goal is to expand youth apprenticeships from 500 today to 50,000 in 10 years.
"Among potential changes coming to Indiana based on the Swiss system are letting 11th and 12th graders work part time while attending school part time; and letting businesses have a say in which work skills schools teach students," writes O'Donnell.
In addition to traditional apprenticeships in building trades, Swiss apprenticeships include health care, manufacturing, information technology, banking and other career fields. About two thirds of students in Switzerland participate in apprenticeships, many starting part-time work at age 15. Some will go on to college for academic training, while most go directly to skilled jobs.
In Switzerland, industry associations in each field define necessary skills and write the training curricula. Apprentices train for jobs in the industry, not at a single employer. The Indiana coalition, which includes employers and high school and community college leaders, is hoping to duplicate that.
CareerWise, which started in Colorado, also is creating youth apprenticeships inspired by the Swiss model. In Elkhart County, Indiana, 62 apprentices will work this fall as paralegals, classroom aides, medical assistants and in manufacturing jobs.
It's not easy for school leaders to collaborate with employers, said Jane Allen, former superintendent of Middlebury Community Schools in Elkhart. “Business moves at 100 miles an hour and education is pokey poke, I mean turtle time,”
Employers and trade groups are skeptical about the Biden administration's "registered apprenticeship" grants, writes Rebecca Rainey for Bloomberg.
It "appears to disproportionately benefit unionized contractors and unions,” said Ben Brubeck of the Associated Builders and Contractors, a construction industry trade association.
Pre-existing programs will have an unfair advantage, says John Pallasch, who worked in the Department of Labor in the Trump administration. New ideas could be shut out.
The proposed rule "would burden apprenticeship programs with red tape, extra costs and more bureaucracy," writes Rachel Wallen Oglesby of the America First Policy Institute.
It "would require businesses to provide apprentices the same benefits as full-time employees, including retirement benefits, paid family leave, healthcare, and more, from the outset," driving up costs and discouraging businesses from participating, she writes. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) rules and reporting requirements also would drive up costs.
Biden-Harris cannot be allowed to govern apprenticeships; instead, cooperative education & training should, like the rest of education, be governed at the state level, although unlike the rest, not more locally, by regional municipalities, since in this case superdestroyer is right, established political school leaders are committed to their own reproduction through the established high school-to-college pipeline, and tend to shunt problem kids off onto other communities, a situation the Swiss Federal Council was tired of when it prioritized VET reform in 1993.
The political problem with such programs is that school board members, school administrators, political leaders, or community leaders never put their own children into the programs. The programs are always sold as being something for the other.
These types of programs might be created--here and there, a little bit by a little bit, and will attract undo attention both pro and con, until they will crumble under the weight of unmet expectations. It's not that I wouldn't support such programs--for years I've decried the "college or you're a failure" mentality of public schools--but the American political process cannot handle an idea like this.
The "experts" in the US completely don't understand what an apprentice is. The government programs demand apprentices be paid more though they are not only unskilled but getting compensation via training and experience. But organized labor demands the high pay and benefits and the government programs are only set up to feed into organized labor
Some observation on apprentices from a time when apprentices weren't just a political football: