Building an Apprenticeship System in Indiana: How the Hoosier State is Adapting the Swiss Model

Publications Mentioned

“No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State,” - The National Council of State Legislatures

Apprentice Nation: How the "Earn and Learn" Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America, - Ryan Craig 

“Career and Technical Education for All,”  - Daniel Curtis and Michael B. Horn

Chapters

0:00 - Intro
3:32 - Focusing Indiana on CTE
5:00 - Applying Lessons Learned from Swiss Apprenticeship in Indiana
8:05 - Building an Apprenticeship System at Scale
10:58 - Adjusting Graduation Requirements
13:52 - The Keys to Successful Stakeholder Collaboration in Indiana
15:10 - Centering Permeability
19:05 - States in the Lead on Apprenticeship
21:56 - Putting Employers in the Driver’s Seat
26:30 - Carving Out Apprenticeship Pathways in High Schools
31:30 - Bringing it Back to the Why

Transcript

Jeff Selingo

So, Michael, remember how recently we dove into Switzerland's apprenticeship model and how everyone looks at it as the gold standard?

Michael Horn

Yes, Jeff. And we talked about how the US keeps sending delegations over there trying to learn from that system, but actually copying it here, turns out that's not so simple.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Right. Well, Indiana is trying to do more  from it and are now making some big moves to change how high school graduation works in the state. New requirements, new pathways, all inspired by what they've seen overseas.

Michael Horn

So what does that really look like, and can Indiana's model offer a blueprintfor other states?

Jeff Selingo

And that's what we're gonna dive into 

Sponsor

This episode of Future U is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student educational success. 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. Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, send it along to a friend so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

Jeff Selingo

I'm Michael Horn, and I'm Jeff Selingo.

Michael Horn

Jeff, I am still very bummed, that I could not join you, for this conversation because Indiana's approach to apprenticeships and high school graduation requirements, those have been something that I've been actively following for a while now. I know a lot of the folks on the ground there. And it sounds like a real earnest and and frankly, you know, higher probability attempts than a lot of other places to translate some of those Swiss lessons that we talked about on part one of this two part series.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. It really is. And they're not just admiring the Swiss model from afar. They're trying to take some of the best aspects of it and adapt them to fit their own needs. It's about giving students more flexibility and real world readiness. And the and the timing couldn't be more interesting because Indiana has just approved these new high school graduation requirements. They're approved in December. They're gonna go into place in a couple of years, and they're designed to give students more pathways to success, whether that's college, career training, or straight into the workforce. And we're gonna link to those standards in the in the show notes. So I got to sit down with Claire Fiddian Green. She's the president and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, and she's been at the forefront of education reform efforts in Indiana for years. She also served as Special Assistant for Education Innovation to former governor Mike Pence, and she cofounded the Center for Education and Career Innovation. She walked me through Indiana's pilot programs, the trips to Switzerland to study their system firsthand, and now the state is putting those lessons into action with new these new high school graduation requirements aimed at building real pathways from education to employment. Claire, welcome to Future U.

Claire Fiddian-Green

Thank you so much for having me. Glad to be here.

Focusing Indiana on CTE

Jeff Selingo

So the National Conference of State Legislatures put out a report called "No Time to Lose" back in 2016, which really pointed to this urgent need to study other higher education systems to to kind of discover what works. And you were telling us earlier that you read that report and it was kind of your light bulb moment. Why was that?

Claire Fiddian-Green

We awarded a grant to NCSL Foundation to come in and share the findings of the report. It had four big recommendations. The one that really had the most, that resonated the most stakeholders was we really need to do a better job with our career and technical education system. And that's because we need to do a better job preparing young people for careers and meet the needs of employers. So that was the recommendation and report that really took off like lightning in Indiana. And that's because employers have been struggling to fill their workforce needs for a long time. There has been a lot of effort put into enrolling kids in college and and hoping that that's the solution. And what this report really pointed to was college, of course, is an important solution, but it cannot be the only solution. We need to figure out additional ways of training young people for careers and meeting the needs of employers.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. So right after that, you kind of took a a group from Indiana to meet with, Katie Caves who in Switzerland, and and Katie was our our guest on the first part of this two part series about apprenticeships. What was the one thing that you took away from that that visit?

Claire Fiddian-Green

Yeah. So in the NCSL report, Switzerland was highlighted as the gold standard globally for preparing young people for careers and meeting the needs of employers. So as part of our effort, we did have a planning group that went over to Switzerland to study at the institute that Katie and her boss, Dr. Ursula Reynold, lead for countries around the world. And it was amazing to see a system that operates at scale. 65 to 70% of young people choose a paid apprenticeship starting in the tenth grade, and it expands the entire economy. So it's very different than what we have in the United States. And seeing it in action, after reading the report, of course, really, I think, helped all of us on that planning team say, there's gotta be a better way to prepare young people, and this is the example that can really guide what we're doing in Indiana.

Applying Lessons Learned from Swiss Apprenticeship in Indiana

Jeff Selingo

So let's then fast forward to today. Could you tell us a little bit more about the, you know, the apprenticeship system in Indiana that Indiana has built out to date?

Claire Fiddian-Green

Yes. So actually, after that institute attendance, was in 2019, we, the foundation, awarded, some startup funding to get a pilot program going in Indianapolis. And then we also, at the same time, decided to fund a statewide community of practice because there were other parts of the state that were also trying to figure out how to do this. We thought it's better that we all work together and try to be a little more systemic and then also elevate implementation challenges so that we could be talking about them as a group to figure out what are the solutions. Of course, that work started just as the pandemic was starting, which was not great timing. But we did have, I think, really amazing uptake from schools and also from the the employers who said, okay. We're willing to be part of this experiment and hire young people. And what we decided to do it in the eleventh grade instead of tenth grade like they do it in Switzerland. But because of the pandemic, I think primarily, it was really just whoever said yes. It wasn't organized by industry. So we did, through that community of practice, learn from our pilot sites what are some of the challenges that they were facing. And, really, there were two big challenges that kept coming up. One was that each apprenticeship was kind of a one off experience with employers, and we didn't really have industry in the lead to say, here are the occupations that we need filled, and here are the competencies that we need to see developed. It was really more kind of one off. The second thing was there was inadequate flexibility in the high school schedule for young people to actually leave high school and go to the the workplace. So, our friends, the Indy Chamber, they do an annual leadership exchange trip, and we helped support them taking a group of people from Indiana to Switzerland in 2023. And that was great because we had a 120 people from Indiana, business leaders, higher education presidents, government leaders, foundations, nonprofit leaders, all seeing the system at scale and and, importantly, being together to talk about, okay. We have these pilot programs. What are some of the things that we should be thinking about doing differently to address the challenges that we have faced during the pilots?

Building an Apprenticeship System at Scale

Jeff Selingo

Okay. So any other challenges that you faced during the pilots beyond the ones that you mentioned, the schedule and things like that.

Claire Fiddian-Green

Yeah. Those were the two biggest. The others,  The next one was transportation. And because students weren't able to leave the building in any systematic way, it was they were at the workplace a couple hours here or a few hours there. That's very hard to come up with transportation solution then. The fourth was a lack of a labor market aligned career advising system. What we mostly have is young people's interest as guiding the career advising. And often, it's how do I go to college? It's not necessarily here are the available careers that are here today and will be here in a decade from now. What's the best pathway for me to be prepared for that career? And then, the the last thing I would say is we have a very fragmented work based learning landscape. And what that means for employers is that they're often contacted by lots of different entities asking for engagement. That's hard for them to respond to and it's really not systemic.

Jeff Selingo

So I wanna talk a little bit then about how the system will grow and change as you scale. I wanna focus on those two those last two things, you know, lack of alignment, a very fragmented system. Because you're developing employer associations that would give employers an influential role in developing these academic programs, which is really a departure from most American partner, apprenticeship programs, are really funneled often through academic institutions. Why is it so important to empower businesses in in that way?

Claire Fiddian-Green

I will confess that it took me a while to really realize this, but the reason Switzerland is a gold standard is because they have employers in the lead for this pathway. And so that ever since the Indy Chamber trip that I mentioned that was in, 2023, we then led industry focused trips starting in 2024, and we've got more happening in 2025 where we do a deep dive with Indiana employers in industry with their peers in Switzerland to see what is the capacity that they have created in Switzerland that makes it easier for employers to actually be in the lead. And they have what they call professional associations or professional organizations that are charged with convening all the employers in their industry to say, what are the occupations, and then what are the things you need people to be doing on the job? They then backwards map that into what are competencies that can be taught in an apprenticeship. And most of that taught at the apprenticeship experience happens on the job. It does not happen in a classroom. So you really do need employers in the lead. And so when we realize, okay. There is this missing capacity that does not exist in our country or in our state, that was what led us, the foundation, to say, okay well, let's ask the employers who went to Switzerland and met with their peers, saw this capacity. Who is best suited to lead you around your talent needs within your industry? So we have awarded some startup funding to launch what we're calling industry talent associations in Indiana.

Adjusting Graduation Requirements

Jeff Selingo

Well, and you're also thinking about that flexibility at the high school level. And this is something that we heard from Katie when we talked with her just how more flexible the high school, system is and the high school experience is in in Switzerland. And you're making some changes to the high school graduation requirements in Indiana. Could you explain those changes and how it introduced flexibility and why that's so important?

Claire Fiddian-Green

Yes. I'm very excited about those changes. Indiana legislature  of Education to make changes to a high school diploma and graduation requirements. So that law was enacted, in the 2024 session, and they spent last year going through the rulemaking process, and that was approved by the State Board of Ed December of 2024. So, schools can opt into it, but it has to be in place within the next few years. And the exciting thing about that is that there is gonna be a lot more flexibility for a high quality apprenticeship like what we are building through, this initiative that, we're helping to fund here in Indiana, where students can actually leave the high school building three to four days a week so that they can be at the workplace during that time, getting training, doing on the job work, and actually contributing to their employer. The reason that's important is because, in Switzerland, employers play a very big role. They pay an apprentice fee. They have internal staff that they have to pay to actually oversee this program. That's a big investment by employer. Why do they do that? Because the apprentices actually are doing productive work, and they can't just be there for a few hours a couple days a week. They actually need to be there for full full days to actually become a productive member of their team.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah and so how does the pathway that a  because I'm assuming since they're gonna be spending a decent amount of time outside of high school that then affects their coursework. Correct?

Claire Fiddian-Green

Yes. So that's the other thing that we, that is now possible with the Indiana high school diploma, changes. There is a a minimum that everyone has to achieve, and then there's some options. If you wanna go on to a four year institution, there's additional classes that you can take. Or if you wanna go into a high quality apprenticeship like, what we've been working to develop, then you can do that as well. And that means that some of the competencies that you're gaining and developing at the workplace count towards your high school diploma credits. So that's a game changer, and that's that is how it's set up in Switzerland. And so, for example, you don't just take every class. You take the classes that are aligned with your occupation that you are learning about in your apprenticeship. So for example, a banking apprentice might need more math and economics than a health care apprentice is gonna need chemistry and anatomy. Now, of course, there's basic things that you every student needs to know, like language, etcetera. But they they actually specialize the classwork to be aligned with the occupation, and that is gonna be possible now in Indiana.

The Keys to Successful Stakeholder Collaboration in Indiana

Jeff Selingo

So when we had Katie on, the last episode about apprenticeship, she said Indiana is the only place in the US that has been able to put together government schools, districts, businesses, employer associations, and local community leaders, and funding, like all the different pieces of this. And other states are still trying to figure this out. Right? So what's been the key to your success in bringing all these disparate groups together?

Claire Fiddian-Green

Well, I do think we have a history of of a state, as a state of getting together across sectors to try to work on complex challenges. That's that's not atypical for us. And I do think, the fact that we had pilot programs in place, so we already had a little bit of experience that was already happening in different parts of the state right before this Indy Chamber trip where we had leaders from all those sectors together for an intensive time in Switzerland, seeing a system at scale, and then having the opportunity to talk about what needs to be different in Indiana. That really was kind of the pivotal moment. I will say they've been at the table, intensively ever since. That's been almost two years, and we've grown to more than 275 people that are participating, across sectors across our state and trying to help us figure out how do we actually create a statewide system at scale.

Centering Permeability

Jeff Selingo

So, Claire, the one thing that was interesting to Michael and I when we interviewed, Katie and really dug deep into the Swiss system was this, you know, idea of permeability. Right? The opportunity to move back and forth between vocational and academic paths because it's really important aspect of the the Swiss system. Are you trying to bring that into, the Indiana system in some way, this this idea of permeability so that students don't feel, because this has always been the case in The US, they don't want students to feel trapped in a certain way.

Claire Fiddian-Green

Yes. And that's why we love the Swiss system so much. And we do have both the two and four year institutions at the table with us, helping us figure out how do we actually build this and then create those mechanisms that makes it possible for an apprentice to go on to get a four year degree if that's what they want to do. In Switzerland, they have a bridge year. It's a one year program that you can take after an apprenticeship that basically you catch up on the classes that you didn't take. So you can go to a four year university. And so we are working right now with our commission for higher education, but also the higher ed institutions to figure out how are we gonna do the same thing because we don't wanna create a dead end system, if you're making a choice when you're in the tenth or eleventh grade. I don't know about you, but I can remember I changed my mind a lot. And so we want to provide that flexibility for our young people. That's gonna be better for them. It's gonna obviously make that their family and parents more excited about them choosing that option, but also gives them maximum flexibility for their career and education after the apprenticeship.

Jeff Selingo

Claire, you know, it's really interesting just going back to that episode that we did with, with Katie just to see how a state has adopted this, you know, going from pilot, you know, understanding what what didn't work there, bringing together all these various different parties, and then now expanding this to a much bigger way statewide. I I, you know, I'd now only hope that, you know, 49 other states can follow your lead in, in Indiana. I I I certainly hope so.

Claire Fiddian-Green

Well, thank you for saying that. And I will say there's a lot of work still to do, and I am just so grateful for all the people pilots, that have told us what needed to change, and then are now, this broader group trying to actually work on implementation. We still have a lot of work to do, and, we we hope that the other 49 states go in this direction. And, really, the key is having employers lead and creating the capacity that actually allows them to do that in a systematic way, not in a one off way. That is the key that we think, is what we need to do now in Indiana.

Jeff Selingo

Claire, thank you so much for being on Future U.

Claire Fiddian-Green

Thank you, Jeff. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Michael Horn

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.

Jeff Selingo

This episode of Future U is sponsored by the Gates Foundation. Students need support at every stage of their education to career pathway, and colleges and universities need to evolve to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the foundation's efforts to transform postsecondary institutions to be more student centered at USprogram.gatesfoundation.org.

States in the Lead on Apprenticeship

Michael Horn

Welcome back to Future U off that interview Jeff that you did with Claire, and it seems like she laid out a playbook for how they have gotten this done so far in Indiana. Is that what you heard?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael, I really wish  or probably better work for a governor because that's where I think this is gonna happen. Scale is important, but we all know we don't have a national economy. We have regional and state economies with regional and state employers, of course. And then we have a K through 12 system that is state based largely and higher ed systems within the state. So I really think the unit of change here is with state governments, not with the federal government. Obviously, a lot of upheaval in the federal government bureaucracy anyway. But we've tried this at the federal level, I think, for generations, and it just hasn't seemed to work. And so I actually think doing this at the state level is is better. And I heard three things with Claire. One was a pilot program. They got a pilot program going in Indianapolis. The second thing is they took that pilot program and they formed a statewide community practice with all the key players to learn from the things that worked well in that pilot program and the mistakes they made. Then they brought together a group of all the various players that would need to make this work, government, school districts, businesses, employer associations, local government leaders to figure out what are the solutions. So those three pieces, the pilot program, obviously, which they learned what they wanted to do in that pilot program from Switzerland, statewide community practice to learn from those mistakes, and then really creating the group of various players who are actually gonna put this into place in the States. And the other reason, Michael, I say why this is a state solution because I've seen kind of the competition that happens between states when a policy works in a state. Right? We saw this in the late nineteen nineties when we had, you know, Georgia form the Hope Scholarship from the Georgia lottery that sent all these, high quality students that used to leave the state of Georgia. They started going to UGA, and then we saw Florida copy that, and Louisiana copy that, and Tennessee copy that, and West Virginia copy that. Right? So I really do think that states are kind of laboratories. Again, especially now given what's happening at the federal level, states are kind of the laboratory of changes in this in this model. And if if Indiana really does pull this off, I can kind of see not you know, states not necessarily going all the way to Switzerland to see what's going on, but actually going to Indiana to see what's going on and trying to copy from them.

Putting Employers in the Driver’s Seat

Michael Horn

I'm not sure which one is more expensive to  for governor signs made up. I one two other things I hear in your answer, by the way, also is the continuity of having one funder at the table pushing this agenda forward. And and and, you know, and Claire and and the Fairbanks Foundation, obviously, was important. And then second, Indiana is small enough as a unit, right, to get your hands around. Whereas if you're trying to do this at the federal level, Gates Foundation ain't gonna, know, ain't gonna be able to push that across the board. I wish they could, but there's just too many competing interests, right, And at the federal level, state level, you can really organize people around. Claire also pointed to two other big hurdles, though, that kept coming up in the pilot stage that you just referenced. One was the high school schedule. We'll we'll let's get to that in a minute, Jeff. The other was that there were too many one off experiences. So, you know, one employer, one job, one apprenticeship, sort of like pebbles, right, coming up the mountain. That's a recipe to, you know, never get to scale for anything. Right, Jeff?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, there was this related issue  have a very fragmented work based learning landscape, and that means, you know, employers are often contacted by lots of different entities asking to engage. You know, Michael, as soon as Claire said that, I really thought of our friend Ryan Craig who wrote the book Apprentice Nation. You know, and he kept talking about, you know, employers, colleges, you know, walk knocking on each other's door. You're never gonna scale something on that one to one kinda hand to hand combat. That was his, you know, his big takeaway in his his book. As he said many times, we always hold up Switzerland like we did in the last episode on this topic in Germany. But, you know, The UK and Australia, they were way behind those countries decades ago, much like The US is now on apprenticeships. And what happened is that they figured out that employers and institutions can't do this themselves. They need intermediaries that take out many of the tasks of good apprenticeships. It gives both sides that single point of of contact. Now Ryan might think of intermediaries a bit differently than Indiana. Right? There because in Indiana they have these employer associations. And as Claire said, employers have to take the because most of the learning happens in the job, not in the classroom. And I thought that was a really interesting point, Michael. Because, you know, when we were in Boise together earlier in the season, we were at the College of Western Idaho, and we're looking at how they interacted with Micron. The employer certainly played a role there. There's no doubt about it in terms of equipment and curriculum, but the educational institution seemed to be in lead there, don't you think?

Michael Horn

Yeah. I think you're right, Jeff, and it speaks to something we'll come back to this multiple times, but the employer is the customer. Right? And and I've always thought of I I actually don't like saying students are the customer of higher ed. I know some people like that. I I I see them more as clients where the institution is sort of guiding them, if you will. Right? But the customer's never wrong. That's the employer. But you need the whole sector to be at the table, right, to make that supply demand balance really work out. And this notion of talent associations, I think, is clever because employers are not going to spend the time, the money, make it a priority to really figure out what are the competencies. Can we, you know, smooth this out over the life cycle of five years and solve it for the industry? Like, that's not their problem. And so you reference the intermediary point that Ryan makes. And you're right. You know, in his mind, intermediaries are actually hiring, right, the individuals to defray that risk from employers. Here are the intermediaries that were doing somewhat of a similar function, which is like companies, their their job is not employers. Their job is to, you know, deliver a service and make money. So these associations can come together and really plan for those things that you that you need to have in a consistent apprenticeship program that's really gonna yield results. Let's go to the second thing, though, now here, which is that high school schedule proving to be a challenge as well because that's something you know, when we talk to Katie Caves, the the Swiss high school system is actually designed to have an apprenticeship track. Right, Jeff?

Carving Out Apprenticeship Pathways in High Schools

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. There was a backstory to this, Michael, that we didn't get in with Claire. But these new graduation guidelines in Indiana, there are three pathway seals that students could earn on top of the the base diploma. Right? Those pathways are college employment or or the military on top of the base employment, or diploma, I should say. And then the rules also allow students to complete more work experience or take a more rigorous academic schedule to earn a kind of a second plus tier of each of those seals. And and what was interesting when we were diving into the research for this episode was that Indiana tried to create something a little bit more akin to the Switzerland system and that they would have required a lot more work experience in high school as part of the changes to the grad requirements. Now I know that is like music to your ears, Michael. But when those draft changes were released last year, they faced criticism from a number of different stakeholders, parents, K through 12, higher ed. You know? And what were they critical of? They kind of felt maybe it would have left too many students unprepared. For, get this, higher education. So even though we were talking about all these different pathways into life after high school, they kept thinking, well, the only pathway is higher education. It seems like, oh, we just can't change that culture around high school as preparation for college and nothing else, can we?

Michael Horn

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it speaks to the primacy that we've had as college as the goal, right, out of high school, in our system. And I get right now, Jeff, you you're probably more on top of this, but a lot of polls are suggesting this is changing. Parents, you know, equal numbers say, gotta think about college for my kid is, don't think about college for my kid. But the reality, I think, is that the expertise and infrastructure just isn't in high schools as of yet to put, you know, career as the primary aim. And you're not gonna reverse forty years of a college for all movement in just a couple years. It's gonna take a lot of time. And I think the other thing is those who want college for their kids, they're still driving the bus. Right? Like, when we look at math requirements, calculus is still put up on that pedestal despite you wishing it it it wasn't, Jeff. So, you know, the the culture is it is very deep. Right? And and you and I have been thinking a lot about how cultures emerge and really become like grooves in a system that are very hard to jump off of. Two quick notes, though, just as I'm thinking about on on, what they did in Indiana, though, on the high school piece and and what ultimately came out of it. Because it's interesting in a lot of states, Massachusetts being one where I am, but a lot of states, there's been this growing movement to increase the supply of career technical education high school, CTE high schools. But then it's been noted, you know, people push back and say, well, those schools are expensive to build and outfit. You have to have, like, all this stuff in there for different career paths, and you gotta bring in expertise around that and equipment and so forth. And then there was this argument that Oren Cass of American Compass made where he said, well, that's actually still cheaper, though, than sending him to college. But, actually, maybe I I you know, maybe you disagree with this, but I think the better argument I took away from your conversation with Claire was that, like, let's just put them in the workplace itself for part of the day because then you're leveraging the infrastructure of the workplace. It's what you said. Like, learning happens in the job. That's huge. And then I think the second piece of that on the high school change is the course taking on top of the apprenticeship or or or job based learning. And I think it solves the problem that Alec Resnick of Powderhouse Schools made to me in a in a piece that Danny and I Danny Curtis and I did for Education Next around CTE for all. And and his worry essentially was that if we too narrowly train people for certain vocations, like you figured out how to install solar panels on a roof, great. You know how to install solar panels on a roof, but you don't know the underlying physics and mathematics that will create an upwardly mobile trajectory for you over time, or frankly, as equipment changes and maybe we don't need people doing that. And so what I liked about what I heard in the interview is if you're going into a STEM related trade, you're going to be taking more math and science classes. So I think you will have that foundation, Jeff, to be able to do other things over time and not just sort of have a dead end job without any upwardly mobile or or laterally mobile trajectory. But I I think it still does leave us with this question, which is how do we change the culture in states, like, to move in this direction? Because, yes, it's all well and nice to say Indiana's moving there, but, like, we we ostensibly want 49 other states competing with them now, Jeff.

Bringing it Back to the Why 

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And just going back to that base knowledge that's absolutely critical. I think that's gonna be even more critical in in the AI world where a lot of that base knowledge is going to be done by AI or some of that base knowledge is gonna be done by AI and you wanna move into higher level skills. And so having those higher level skills largely which come from kind of classroom learning is really critical in combining those with kind of this physical labor in some cases, which can't be necessarily replaced by AI, perhaps by automation. Yes. I think it's a good combination. It's it's in some ways future proofing you against what's gonna happen in the economy in in the future. And when I asked Claire about this, you know, pathway into into apprenticeships and, you know, how do you kinda get over that? How you know, where where does that cultural shift, have to happen? You know, she said that whenever she's confronted by skepticism, you know, people who say apprenticeships and vocational education are somehow lesser than the college path, she always brings it back to the why. And and the why, as she put it, is pretty stark. You know, less than half of the college students are successfully graduating as as we know. So if college isn't working for everyone, then we need a high quality alternative, which is exactly what they're trying to design in in Indiana. And one that isn't treated like a consolation prize, but is a legitimate respective pathway to a fulfilling career. And as I was listening to her, Michael, it really struck me that we have this instinctive value or instinctive way of placing value on on certain majors or certain jobs. It's like there's a hierarchy where only some careers are considered successful. But really, the question we should be asking is, you know, what gets you out of bed in the morning? What truly motivates you? And are we providing students with opportunities that align with that motivation? Where the reason why only half of students might be completing college is they don't have that purpose, that intrinsic purpose for what they want to do in life. And so changing the culture means changing that conversation, and Indiana is trying to do that by bringing employers to the table, by building these real pathways for students, and showing that these pathways can just be just as valuable as the four year degree. And that was my big takeaway from the first part of this series in that we need to treat these as just as good, as the four year degree. I think it's a critical report, point because if we keep treating these alternatives a second rate, we're never gonna make progress on this front. The culture change really has to be expanding opportunities, not ranking them in any way. And if more states start to follow Indiana's lead, we might finally see more of a balanced approach to preparing, young people for the future. I I really hope for that. So that's, today's episode of Future U. Thanks to Claire Fiddian-Green for joining us, and thanks to all of you for listening. And if you haven't already, you know, make sure you subscribe, rate, and review the show. And, of course, stay tuned for more conversations about how education is evolving to meet the needs of tomorrow.