For folks who question the value of a traditional four-year college degree—whether they have done so for ages or have only recently lost faith—apprenticeships seem like a promising alternative for young people leaving high school. They provide immediate pay, in-demand job skills training, mentorship from an experienced professional, and conclude with a nationally-portable credential. Why, then, has the United States lagged behind its international peers in creating, promoting, and filling apprenticeship slots? And can those barriers be overcome to finally supercharge the model here? A recent brief from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) tries to find out.
Author Taylor Maag focuses on formal, federally-registered apprenticeship efforts, which allows for comparison to other countries like the United Kingdom and Germany. Unfortunately, it also leads immediately to roadblock number one: Historically, the United States has favored college matriculation over career education for high school graduates (and for non-graduates seeking to return to complete their education, too), and federal expenditures reflect this favoritism. Pre-pandemic, Maag reports, the federal government spent roughly $149 billion per year on higher education versus $58 billion for workforce-related education and training. And even that latter category included Pell Grants and education programs for veterans, most of which also went to traditional higher education institutions. Maag estimates that the U.S. only spent about $16 billion, spread across seventeen separate federal programs, to provide workforce-focused education, employment, and training assistance. Apprenticeships comprised just a fraction of that.
Roadblock number two: lack of employer buy-in. Apprenticeships are costly to start up, onerous to maintain at a high level, and require a lot of time and oversight. All of this for what could be minimal yield from the pool of potential apprentices, or apprentices who may not stick around once their program is finished.
Roadblock number three, meanwhile, is political. Specifically, Maag states that an effort by President Trump to make apprenticeships simpler to set up and run (via executive order) was opposed so broadly and vehemently that previous bipartisan agreement on the issue was ripped asunder. While that sounds like a very specific and recent point of contention, quickly rescinded upon the change of leadership, historic levels of buy-in on both sides of the aisle will surely be necessary to make an impact.
Currently, just 0.3 percent of all workers in America are apprentices. PPI is looking to boost those numbers significantly to more closely match the percentages of apprentices in the workforce of other countries (2.7 percent in the U.K. and 3.7 percent in Germany, to name two examples), and that means adding 1 million U.S. apprentices annually until the goal of 4 million is reached and maintained. PPI’s recommendations to achieve this lofty goal lead off with federal expenditures of approximately $4 billion a year (based upon a 2015 analysis that showed a single registered apprenticeship cost $4,000 per year to create, oversee, and maintain). The additional money would be carved off from current higher education funding, which makes sense, given that most potential apprentices would be young people diverted from attending college.
But even with that logic, and the fact that the total would represent a tiny reduction in the higher ed line, Maag does not explain why PPI believes the federal government should be footing the entire bill. If employers will receive significant benefit (for every dollar spent on apprenticeship, she writes, “employers get an average of $1.47 back in increased productivity, reduced waste of time and cost, and greater front-line innovation”), surely they should be ponying up some fraction of the seed money as other exemplar countries do.
PPI also recommends an expansion of recipients of federal support, including what are termed “intermediaries” (public organizations, nonprofit groups, labor unions, and for-profit service providers), who would help employers set up and maintain their apprenticeship programs. Additionally, the brief calls for “encourag[ing] alignment and partnership” across government programs to ensure this new apprenticeship paradigm doesn’t become siloed at the federal level, and to make sure that K–12, higher education, and workforce systems are all on the same page at the state and local levels, too.
The policy brief concludes that this proposal is a “smart way to grow a high-quality, evidence-based career path” with the aim of “leveling the playing field between degree and nondegree workers while also ensuring strong returns on investment through outcomes-based funding and industry-driven partnerships.” If the college degree premium is waning, then PPI is probably right. Nevertheless, it stills feels like a huge swing for the fences either way.
SOURCE: Taylor Maag, “Strengthening America’s Workforce: The path to 4 million apprenticeships,” Progressive Policy Institute (May 2023).
