Apprenticeship in America: Rethinking the Role of Community Colleges

More and more business leaders, policy makers, and educators are looking to apprenticeships to prepare the American workforce for in-demand careers. The US system leans on its community colleges to facilitate these programs, but they have not always been the most effective quarterbacks. 

Key Moments

(0:00) - Intro
(3:07) - Apprenticeship programs in the US
(8:31) - Apprenticeship programs and employer engagement in community colleges
(14:28) - Apprenticeship programs for small businesses
(21:30) - Supporting students in apprenticeships and career development
(23:28) - Barriers and solutions to apprenticeships in the U.S.

Transcript

Mitchell Harp:

For me, there is no better workforce training model that helps learners succeed than programs that allow individuals to apply in the real world what they're learning in the classroom. I can tell you stories about individuals who are now making more money than their parents and still don't have a four-year degree, or stories about youth apprentices who bought their first house before they became 20 years old, or apprentices who are working in hospitals when they were 16 and now are registered nurses. By helping people get their foot in the door, you are giving them a much better chance at success in life.

Michael Horn:

That's Mitchell Harp, Dean of Apprenticeship Programs at Trident Technical College in Charleston, South Carolina, and he's one of the many people singing the praises of apprenticeships these days.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, Michael, there's no doubt that the popularity of apprenticeships has surged recently, but this training method whereby an apprentice learns through a combination of paid on the job training and classroom instruction really has been part of the American workforce development since the birth of the nation. In fact, many of the founding fathers were themselves apprentices. George Washington was a surveyor. Benjamin Franklin was a printer.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, it's true. But apprenticeships never really extended beyond those trades all these years, Jeff, and today they train only a very small percentage of the American workforce. Now, this stands in contrast to how these programs are leveraged in some European countries. There, apprenticeships have reached into the growing industries like healthcare and technology, and they train much larger shares of their population.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, Michael, and I think it has really been catching on here in the US and more and more education leaders, business owners and policy makers are looking to develop these earn and learn post-secondary alternatives to the traditional tuition-based higher education path to prepare workers for in-demand careers.

Michael Horn:

And Jeff, here in the United States community colleges have been common providers of the classroom component for these programs, but they haven't done nearly as much in actually quarterbacking these programs. So on this episode of Future U, we talk with leaders helping community colleges thrive as intermediaries of apprenticeship programs between the employer and the learner.

Sponsor:

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

Michael Horn:

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo:

And I'm Jeff Selingo. Looking at most surveys of parents and young adults these days, and there is a thirst for more alternatives to the traditional four-year residential college experience and it's not, and I want to be explicit here, no college, but it's learning with hands-on experience as well as in the classroom all while earning a paycheck. Enter the apprenticeship, which as we mentioned at the top, has been around since the founding of the country. Now, it really never took off in the US like it did in other countries for various reasons, and we're not going to go into that entire history now, but there are two threads that I do want to mention. One is the changing workforce. We know that baby boomers who were trained in many jobs through the military or working on military bases or when fewer people went to college are now retiring and there aren't enough trained younger employees to fill those jobs.

Second, the US is catching on to how the UK, Australia, and several other countries expanded their apprenticeship programs, and that was through intermediaries such as colleges or other community-based organizations that serve as the connector between employers on one side and potential apprenticeships on the other. The first half of today's show will be a bit different than usual in that we're going to give you highlights from two interviews that Michael and I conducted recently on what might finally drive the development of apprenticeships in the US.

Michael Horn:

And as you heard earlier, we spoke with Mitchell Harp, the dean of apprenticeship programs at Trident Technical College in Charleston, South Carolina to learn more about their gold standard apprenticeship programs. They, interestingly, offer programs for both adults and youth in grades 11 and 12 that have gained significant national attention, and Mitchell shared the story of their programs development and the community needs that drove it.

Mitchell Harp:

Well, the college itself had been providing the job related education for our local employer apprenticeship since 1976. However, it really began to focus on developing more apprenticeships when our president, Dr. Mary Thornley, established the apprenticeship office in 2007. The mission of the office was to not only educate employers on how the college would assist them in creating and managing their apprenticeship, but by also serving as a bridge to college staff where it would take the lead in negotiating the unique requests sometimes employers have to get started. In other words, we became an intermediary to help remove barriers that usually prevent apprenticeships from occurring.

In regards to what we saw in the community that led us down this path, Charleston is like many other communities in that we were experiencing a shortage of skilled workers in almost all industries. For example, in the past, Charleston had a naval shipyard that trained generations of industrial mechanics, machinists and welders using apprenticeships. When the shipyard closed in the 1990s because of a BRAC closure, many of these skilled workers went to work at local manufacturers. However, when I started working in the apprenticeship office in 2008, many of these same workers who are now baby boomers were wanting to retire. Because there were no apprenticeships in Charleston during that time, manufacturers were desperate to find talent. Because the college had created that apprenticeship office, the stars aligned perfectly and we now had a solution for them to help grow the next generation of skilled workers.

Michael Horn:

Although Trident's program started with a handful of apprenticeships paired with a couple of employers within those manufacturing industries where frankly, apprentices have always been more common, it has since grown significantly and spread into new industries, as Mitchell told us.

Mitchell Harp:

The college currently manages the 102 apprenticeships for 80 employers, and we have close to 400 apprentices. Over the past 14 years, we have worked with over 200 employers to help them create and run an apprenticeship program. Right now, we have apprenticeships in manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, IT, automotive, construction, engineering, transportation, and local governments. It's definitely not just the trades. We obviously work a lot in that area, but I have apprenticeships in almost every industry in town, and I'll give you an example. We work on three major hospital systems here in town and we have a program that we call the Pre-Nursing Youth Apprenticeship Program where we're taking 16 year olds, employ them in an apprenticeship where they're working as patient care technicians providing patient care in a hospital over a two-year period and they're getting two years of patient care experience. They got roughly 20 to 25 credits towards a nursing degree when they finish the apprenticeship.

So if they continue on, they're five semesters away, really five semester Trident Technical College semesters, away from becoming an RN. So basically, you can become an RN when you're 19 if you follow through with this. This past year, we placed 60 youth apprentices with the hospitals, and it's because they see this as a way to grow that long-term pipeline for the shortage of nurses in the Charleston area. We've already talked with some of our employers for next year because we only start our youth apprenticeship program one year, and one of the hospitals have already told us that they want to hire 30 more. So apprenticeships can be really done in almost any occupation. Through my experience, it's usually only in the occupations that are in demand for the employer. They're the ones where they can't find talent, they've struggled with it, so they've come to the realization that they've got to start building that long-term pipeline and just the fact that Trident Technical College really serves as this intermediary is just a plus for them.

Jeff Selingo:

Any successful apprenticeship program requires employers that are interested in hiring apprentices and then willing and able to train them. Recognizing that, Mitchell and his team have been intentional about engaging and supporting employers to make a ministry in these programs as easy and seamless as possible.

Mitchell Harp:

Our primary goal in the apprenticeship office is to make it very easy for the employers to participate. We understand we can't do an apprenticeship without them, and they are very busy people. So as a community college, we not only provide the job related education for the apprenticeship, but we also help them design the apprenticeship to suit their needs. We recruit apprentice candidates for them, arrange interviews, admit apprentices to the college, register them for their classes. We use technology to send them apprentice schedules, academic midterm reports and grades. We even help them manage the on-the-job training they provide the apprentices using an app that we created called My Apprentice.

Jeff Selingo:

Could you tell us a little bit about the app, because it sounds like you really want to make this as plug and play as possible for employers because that's really what encourages them to have these apprenticeships. The less work that they have to do to have them, the better it is for them.

Mitchell Harp:

The consultants initially meet with the employers and explain what the apprenticeship entails, how the partnership works, and how they will be their point of contact from the start of the apprenticeship to the very end. We want them to know that we are only a phone call or email away to answer their questions. At that point, we educate them on the My Apprentice app, which was specifically designed to help the apprentices understand their apprenticeship requirements, document their achievements, and provide information continuously to employers in order to help them manage their progress and evaluate the apprentice's performance for successful completion.

Michael Horn:

And quick question, Mitchell, did you guys build that app yourself or is that something that any community college could use?

Mitchell Harp:

We built the app ourself. We used some grant money. We do offer the code to anyone potentially interested in using the app.

Michael Horn:

But this wasn't just a plug and play app or figuring out the secret sauce to engage employers, no easy things in and of themselves, but Mitchell also explained that in order for Trident to provide employers with the support they need, the college itself had to look in the mirror and think about how they needed to change, and that meant reconsidering old practices and adding capacity.

Mitchell Harp:

Community colleges are the perk to intermediaries because they can use their influence to help learners get in the front door and also help employers across the nation grow talent through apprenticeships. The obvious disadvantages to this type of work is it's hard work. You have to have a paradigm shift in thinking of how you currently do things. For example, when I first started in the position, I went out and spoke with manufacturers and asked how I could help them. They all told me that they were dying for industrial mechanics and if I could refer them some graduates, they would be much appreciated. I went back and spoke with the dean of that division and she told me the college was actually fixing to shut down that program because of low enrollment. I then went back and explained that to the manufacturers and the response to me was, "Hey, look, if we send you two or three people, could you try to keep it open?"

Again, I went back to that dean and told her what they offered, but they needed it done on Fridays. The dean's response to me was, "Well, Mitch, we don't really teach on Fridays." And my response was, "Really? Are you kidding me?" Then she responded and said, "Well, let me make a few calls and see what she could do." Needless to say, she made it happen and now it's one of the largest, if not the largest industrial programs we have at the college. I currently have 80 industrial mechanic apprentices, plus the college has a thriving public program. It's just an example of the power of how employers engage with the college, it's good for the community. As far as structure goes. When Dr. Thornley created the apprenticeship office, it was just one person. Its only focus was to bring the necessary players to the table, remove any barriers that may prevent it from getting started and help employers help students.

As with any organizations, as I got more employers on board, the staff grew. Now we have myself, two consultants that work with the employers, three apprentice coordinators to manage and recruit apprentices and administrative support staff. Again, our primary goal is to serve as an intermediary with other departments of the college to serve employers. I often tell employers that apprenticeships are not quick fixes to their staffing agencies or their staffing issues. Apprenticeships, when done right, are long-term solutions. They have to be willing to be patient and work with us to create that long-term pipeline they so desire. If they do it, it will work. We have proof. My recommendation to any community college listening is to do what Dr. Thornley did. If it wasn't for her vision and her willingness to take a risk in starting what I call a tiny office who willingness to be patient, to let us fail, correct our mistakes and more importantly, give us support when we started to grow, I don't think I'd be sitting here talking to you right now.

Michael Horn:

Now, as Jeff and I learned, some community colleges like Trident are developing their own apprenticeships and leading employer engagement with success mostly on their own, but other community colleges are developing and implementing these programs with the support of partners. One company stepping into this role is OpenClassrooms. They're an online learning platform that offers career training programs focused in tech fields, and this French company first established a presence in the European workforce landscape and then has been growing its services across the pond over the last several years. We talked with OpenClassrooms CEO and founder Pierre Dubuc to learn more about how they are partnering with American community colleges in California and Maryland. Here's Pierre explaining the mutual benefit achieved through their collaboration.

Pierre Dubuc:

So we're already fairly equipped on the apprenticeship side in the states, but we're not on our own on the higher education side of things. We're not a college, we are in Europe, so we operate completely fully endorsed degree apprenticeship programs in Europe, but in the states we're not. So that's why we collaborate with community colleges to bring that vision to life and making sure that our processes can still also access college credits, college degrees, and the last piece would be also for their brand wellness locally with employers and students. I think obviously we're still fairly recent in the states, so I cannot say that everybody in the states knows about OpenClassrooms, but students and local employers around the community college definitely know about this community college and this brand and respects it. So it makes our life much easier when it comes to students sourcing and matchmaking with employers.

Michael Horn:

That makes a lot of sense from your end. I'm curious about the community colleges, what's in it for them and why they want to partner with you all?

Pierre Dubuc:

Yeah, I would say there's definitely an interest in building more career oriented programs, so the ordinarity around job placement, ensuring carry outcomes and making sure their students and graduates find good jobs, quality jobs. Also providing the right talent to local employers. Some of those community colleges don't necessarily have the curriculum aligned to employer's needs, so we are working on data analytics and cybersecurity and all of those hot skills and jobs. Some community colleges have those curriculums, but quite frankly, not all of them. It's also pragmatically a need in compliance and registration to operate a bunch of programs and tap in specific funding, like state level funding or federal funding. You need to be registered as an apprenticeship provider, so US DOL or state level, and many of those colleges don't necessarily have this registration, so they can already have access to this type of funding on workforce development and apprenticeship.

Jeff Selingo:

So in response to our question about the logistics and responsibility sharing, Pierre explained that OpenClassrooms strives to take on much of the hard work of implementing these programs. He emphasized that the keys to engage in employers in apprenticeships are simplifying the process and leveraging public funds like those recently made available for apprentices in California, for example, to reduce the financial risks for them.

Pierre Dubuc:

We try and deliver a turnkey solution to employers, so we want that to be super easy for employers. So the promise for employers is that training costs are covered through some sort of funding, state funding, federal funding, workforce development boards, or we're going to basically identify their needs in terms of jobs and skills. So let's say they want to hire a data analyst, we're going to have a program in front of that. We're going to source potential talent in the vicinity of their location. We're going to bring them pre-selected profiles. They're going to interview them, they're going to choose who to hire. The program itself for the apprentice is typically 12 months long and they're going to walk for four days a week. So it's called on the job training at the workplace, and they're going to be trained by OpenClassrooms for one day a week.

So you have the under job training and what we call the related training instruction. So the one day a week you have projects to complete to demonstrate your skills, you have access to your online courses. We provide an industry practitioner in the field of study, so let's say data analytics, your mentor, so you'll have a one-on-one mentorship session every week, and we're going to monitor and organize all of this. We are the sponsor of the apprenticeship program, meaning that we report to the US DOL or the state agency when it comes to apprenticeship programs. We also manage to leverage what we call wage funding, meaning that we can offset at least partially wages for the first year of the apprenticeship program. So as a small business, for example, training costs will be covered in California and you probably would get 20% to 30% offsetting of your wages.

Michael Horn:

OpenClassrooms is now working across states and within multiple communities in California. Pierre shared that while some elements of their services have proven to transfer across these contexts, the employer engagement piece has differed by location, industry and company size.

Pierre Dubuc:

Yeah, I think the training itself, jobs, curriculum, skills, they're the same. Honestly, data analytics is the same job in California or in Maryland. That being said, the outreach to local businesses and the matchmaking can be very different, and the interest from employers can be also very different, can be only very local small businesses, or it can be large enterprise. So in the DC are, we have a lot of gov related contractors, so it'd be in the military, many of them might run background checks and so on. While in the Central Valley of California, we really talk mostly to mom and pop businesses and very small businesses. So the knowledge and the level of support they might have access to can be very different. So I think it's mostly regarding the relationship with employers and local businesses that can change significantly. In a rural area versus a metropolitan area, the interest from employers might be quite different for different reasons.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, so I want to double click on that one because serving small businesses, especially those in the tech industry that I suspect don't have a lot of experience with apprenticeships. How do you educate them on what apprenticeship entails and prepare them for success in these programs? That would seem like quite a lift.

Pierre Dubuc:

It is, I'm not going to lie. It's tough. So we need to spend a lot of time. I think for small business, they don't really have an interest in all of the complexity, the bureaucracy and the red tape of running and registering a bunch of programs. So you need to be really direct with them. They have a need in terms of jobs and talent and skills. They want labor that is trained. That's it. The rest is just fluff to them, and they don't have time, quite frankly, to understand or do anything. So we need to bring them qualified talents and we need to take everything else off their plates.

Jeff Selingo:

In addition to supporting colleges and employers, OpenClassrooms also provide students with the assistance they need to meaningfully access these programs. Pierre shared that their programs attract apprentices with a wide range of experience levels and as such, their needs range widely.

Pierre Dubuc:

And obviously when you have a candidate at the age of 35, it's usually way easier to present them to employers because they've been already in the workforce for quite a few years. But we do coach them. So we offer one-on-one career coaching, reviewing their CV and their soft skills when it comes to employers. We do that a lot for younger candidates. We do high school, post high school apprenticeship programs or pre-apprenticeship, and it's a lot about soft skills and how to collaborate with other colleagues in the workplace or your manager. That is extremely helpful. Quite frankly, at the age of 18 it's quite rare that a person would be already proficient in terms of soft skills.

Jeff Selingo:

Just a great conversation with Pierre and Mitchell. Michael and I will have a few more thoughts when we come back on Future U. This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low-income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. Ascendium believes that system level change and a student-centric approach are important for our nation's efforts to boost post-secondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why their philanthropy aims to remove systemic barriers faced by these learners, specifically first-generation students, incarcerated adults, veterans, students of color, adult learners, and rural community members. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

Michael Horn:

Welcome back to Future U and Jeff, in listening to the highlights from our interview, I'm struck by something that you told me when you got back from a trip to Switzerland last year where it seems everyone is an apprentice, and as soon as I say that, I'm sure I'm going to get angry letters about the people who aren't. But why, in your view, does this continue to be so hard in the United States?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, Michael, I think there are a few reasons. One is scale, right? The US isn't the size of Switzerland or the UK or Australia, and so I do want to defend the US a bit here because I think that we always show these examples of other countries that are on a much smaller scale than the US. So of course it's always going to take longer and there's a lot more bureaucracy here.

Second, I think we have a culture that really started to develop in the 1970s and 1980s, especially as the college going rate increased. That job training starts with colleges and then transitions to employers, but there's really not a partnership between the two and as a result, jobs that I think of today as ones that really should start as training as apprenticeships, so think of accountants or graphic designers or marketing, they're all now considered bachelor's degree jobs first, and then the training comes after the bachelor's degree or sometimes as part of the bachelor's degree through co-ops or internships.

I think that mindset is shifting and it's quickly shifting, and we see the rise in interest in internships, in co-ops in college, for example, and experiential learning in general. We see surveys where half of parents say they want alternatives to the traditional four-year degree. So I think, again, we're starting to see that shift.

Now, third, and perhaps most important, is that these are demand driven solutions. Now, maybe we're finally here because American companies are ensuring more manufacturing work and employers in general are having a difficult time finding trained workers given the retirements of the baby boomers. So it could be that we just had to wait for this moment to happen because before this, it seemed that we had government funding. We had community colleges stand up programs with those dollars largely driven through workforce training boards, and then it was pretty quiet because there just wasn't enough employee or employer demand. Or if there was, then the two parties really couldn't find each other or it was just too difficult to make it happen. The friction to start these program, Michael, was high, and that's where the intermediaries come in. So I'm interested in your thoughts if this really is the moment for apprenticeships to thrive and the way that both Trident and OpenClassrooms programs each are overcoming the barriers that have historically inhibited community colleges to play that role of intermediary.

Michael Horn:

Look, for the reasons you just laid out, Jeff, maybe it will be the moment, but I wasn't thinking about this until you went through your answer. Given the importance of experiential learning because of the rapid pace of change in technology, the need for this right now couldn't be clearer in my mind. And as you were describing the shifts and the workplace and different occupations and expectations and so forth, I just couldn't help thinking about one of the theories of innovation from Clay Christensen's playbook, which is interdependence and modularity, and basically what it says is whenever there's an interface between two parts of a system where you do have specify ability, you can specify, you can verify, you can be predictable that if I meet the specifications, this is going to work when I throw it over the modular interface, then you could have two parties that are independent working with each other, but when the rate of change of technology and skills was slow, then that worked great.

And so your example is like, "Hey, colleges, you take care of the learning, graduate the students. And companies, you take the graduates, no worries." But it's clear we're just not in that world anymore. The rate of change is such that you just can't specify how you teach the skills in clear ways. It's just a moving target. The ability to verify through independent means, assessment or a degree or whatnot, it's just too up in the air. Employers want to see the work product itself. They want to see a portfolio of your work. Can you do the work? It's all making this very interdependent. And so I think that increases the pressure on really bundling work and learning. And in my mind, that's what Trident is doing. They're not only rethinking their own practices in some dramatic ways, and look, we can laugh about classes on Fridays, can you imagine?

But if we're big serious, these are big deals in changing the culture and processes of a place that really ripple through a college stuck in tradition, but the fact that they've also built an entire app, Jeff, to make the mentoring and specifiability of what an apprentice needs to do and is what they're learning clear, that's really impressive in my mind. And then you have OpenClassrooms coming in to try to make this modular for a community college at another part of the process, as in, "Let us take care of the curriculum for you. We'll take care of the bureaucracy of registering and apprenticeship and getting the funding." And Jeff, they're not even just doing that. They're also using the valuable brands of these community colleges and putting, it sounds like, serious sweat equity in to educate small and medium-sized businesses about the value of these apprenticeship programs.

Look, this can't be easy. This is not an at scale rinse and repeat software like solution, but all to say behind this serious work, it's the work we need to do if we're actually going to move apprenticeships beyond a few scale fields, places where PE firms like Ryan Craig at Achieve Partners will invest. If it's going to expand beyond this into every corner of the American economy that perhaps we need apprenticeships right now, given this rate of change of skills and so forth, you're going to need to see these serious efforts. And I think community colleges, along with partners or technology providers that can put in sweat equity alongside them, whether it's Trident doing it or a partner like OpenClassrooms, that's the sort of effort it's going to take, I think, to bridge the gap.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, and I'm hoping that we can finally do this. And again, I think that the demand on the student side, on the apprentice side might finally make this happen as well. And there's just so much to chew on, Michael, out of that great conversation with OpenClassrooms and with Trident Technical College in South Carolina, really want to thank Ascendium Education for making this crucial conversation possible in this kind of depth. And as always, thanks to all of you, our listeners, who this podcast without of whom would not be possible, and so we'll see you next time on Future U.