I see these jobs like the Army Warrant Officer program where you specialize in one field but can’t advance out of it. As far as lawyers this was the traditional route, even as recently as Calvin Coolidge.
2
I love the idea of apprenticeships as opposed to getting raked over the coals by an exploitive university system that primes you for hierarchical extraction for the remainder of your adult life until you retire.
I have spent my entire adult life in expensive major American cities and some of the healthiest happiest brightest and best educated people I know have eschewed a formal education. Why the heck would you take on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in service to corrupt university and banking systems, when you are resourceful and have a critical thinking skills? Many people do not need the guidance of an egregiously overvalued program in order to take a structured and meaningful approach to vital and serviceable education. As an adult, now in my 50s, who dropped out of college because I don’t really fancy debt, I have probably made considerably less money over the course of my life then your average white collar corporate employee. by the same token, I sleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, live in a clean house, have zero debt, routinely avoid badly conceived overpriced conveniences, enjoy nearly perfect health, and rarely have a shortage of time to do the things I want to do. I also run productive business interests.
The question I ask is, who is better off? The person who has clamored to become a permanent symbiote of big institutional capitalism, or me? I’ll go with me.
Bring back apprenticeships. College is not the answer for everybody.
6
The question we should ask, however, does an apprenticeship give a person the background needed, particularly in the health care field to be as good as someone with a degree? If the answer is no, then the field would have to be stratified to reflect that, if yes then the quality of care would likely be diminished further than it already is. There has been a push from a variety of directions to eliminate a liberal degree calling it unnecessary in a changing world. Nothing could be further from the truth. The challenge is to make college affordable again, not create a poorly educated class, that while having little debt, may not be qualified to make life and death decisions.
5
It's time for us as a a society to admit that "College for All" is not a reasonable, affordable or necessary goal. Maybe instead of accepting that college must be a requirement for middle income and higher jobs, we should start challenging that assumption.
Not everyone wants to be part of "the elite", nor can they be. Believe it or not there are tens of millions of very happy people who are not wealthy. Just because "the elite" wouldn't send their kids to an apprenticeship program doesn't mean it might not be a good option for kids whose parents are not obsessed with status.
51
I often wonder how much talent is overlooked, untapped, and squashed by requiring a college degree, especially for entry level jobs.
66
@Nancy G I often wonder how much talent is overlooked, untapped, and squashed by requiring people to pay thousands of dollars for a college education.
6
Exactly, especially for companies that swear they cannot find qualified applicants!
8
@Charlotte Napper, Agree with both you and Eric.
I also think some talented people don't want to go the college route, or can't even if it were free. Not one size fits all or march to the same music.
4
Does Launch Code teach you how to see a Caravaggio? Will the Chicago Apprenticeship Network help you feel the tragic, misdirected rage of Othello? How about the Urban Institute? When Jean Valjean takes the candlesticks, will they help you understand the debt that he can't repay?
Education is not job placement. Education builds men and women. We spent the last 40 years destroying our educational system, and now when kids are having trouble, we have the unmitigated gall to say, "Maybe college just isn't for you?" Just try telling that to a parent of a child in Los Feliz, Lake Forest, or Westchester.
65
@Walter Bruckner I agree in many ways, especially with your apt examples from the first paragraph. However, why do you equate "education" with the academy/college? There are many forms of education and apprenticeship is one of them.
18
@Walter Bruckner
Thank you thank you thank you.
I would add -- does Launch Code help you understand the social and political implications of what you are coding?
I support free state college, community college, and trade schools. All three can help young people become thinking citizens. And more than ever before, we need thinkers.
17
@Walter Bruckner I appreciate the sentiment that education is an end to itself. Education, however, comes in many forms and to assume that liberal arts western education is the only acceptable route is a narrow view. How many art history majors can adequately describe DNA transcription? And in your examples, where are the authors from Eastern cultures or artists of African heritage?
Quite honestly, a liberal arts education isn't for everyone. We should be supportive of any additional post high school education whatever form it takes.
18
To me it is interesting that once people of color became educated, i.e., Masters and Doctoral degrees, all of a sudden, a college education became unnecessary. I wonder how the apprentice rooster breaks down racially, ethnically and sexually. In other words, will the better connected secure the better apprenticeships? If the answer is yes, then please do not scrap the educational system just because its too difficult or too expensive. The value of a college education is found in ones' understanding of the history, basis for and how social workers, nurses, doctors, computer programmers came into existence. I certainly don't want someone prescribing medications for me or my family and friends, who can barely read past the 5th grade. Nobody is going to read the PDR to anyone else who is an apprentice. There is nothing like hating the educated and replacing them with the uneducated. Ask DJT for guidance or view the Apprentice White House, coming to your television soon.
8
So many posters are saying that college is to teach you to think and and develop the ability to learn. No, that is what elementary and high school are for. As a professor, I have seen vast percentages of students who come in unprepared to benefit from advanced education; many have very poor reading, writing, and basic math skills, let alone basic analytical thinking and understanding of how to approach new material. They are the people who cannot get college-level jobs and will not advance professionally; it is heartbreaking to see colleges rake these students in with false promises. Apprenticeships are great for the high school graduates who have actually received an education, and were it not for gatekeeping to keep professional numbers down, many fields like law and medicine might have higher competency levels than we see now if certification exams were opened to apprentices. The problem is poor education at the elementary and high school level. That is where you should learn to learn, and gain your broad exposure to the disciplines. We need to stop making college the new high school, and masters degrees the new college, and make a high school degree good enough to allow any student to choose a next step of either education or apprenticeship that suits them.
17
@jer I can't recommend your post enough. Teaching students to think and learning how to learn can start as early as pre-school, and does occur in our better schools. Unfortunately it is not the norm.
1
The problem with companies and investing in work forces wanting guarantees of loyalty is the same problem with general human tendencies to want to get something for nothing. These companies want the benefits of an educated workforce but many do zero or far too little to contribute to the education of these workforces. These useless at-work training classes masquerading as professional development are essentially the blind leading the blind while advancement remains a fickle mechanism of mainly chronyism, nepotism and legacy. Why should companies get tax breaks galore and then pay people as little as possible for their expensive educations essentially reaping the benefits given to them by larger society! The myth of the "did it on my own" business operation is absolute bull and should be challenged. Some do, but many take far more than they give.
My 30-yr old son got a two year tech degree at our local technical college. He moved to the Dallas area to take a job with a large health care corp. That same company paid the tuition costs so he could get a 4-yr degree. He left the original company and now is employed by a German medical device mfg. He should earn close to a 6-figure salary this year. He loves his job and living in Austin, TX.
Again, he started on this path with a 2-yr degree from our local technical school. Technical colleges deserve our gratitude and support.
16
They're against internship programs because it might create a two-tier system. What exactly do we have currently? This is the most sensible idea I've read about to deal with overpriced colleges in a long time. There are always whiners.
11
You cannot call yourself an engineer until you have "PE" after your name. Until then, you have earned an engineering degree.
1
Interesting. I’d like to add to the discussion that although I am not going to law school, I did go to community college for two years after graduating from high school at 16 (skipped 2 grades). I was unable to go to a four year university as my mother didn’t want me to go so young and without a scholarship. I became a mother and focused creating a good life for him. In the 13 years it has taken me to get back on track toward my legal goals, I have studied journalism, civics, fine art, & constitutional law. I read for an hour a day and is very abreast of national and local politics. I’m a media producer and have worked with amazing minds to inform others of stories, resources, and community actions that affect them. I have worked with Google to launch a hyperlocal news app, in multiple journalism cohorts, traveled across the country for conferences, and always been competent enough to work with those with or without degrees. So when you think about the rarity of the opportunity to study and pass the bar, maybe you should consider that my capabilities are above and beyond instead of assuming that I may not know math (although I learned college math in high school as an advanced student) or that I am not well rounded enough to understand fine art. Just consider for a second that there are systemic issues that can push out competent people, and these apprenticeships offer an opportunity for those people to serve the public, anyway. Please consider donating to esqapprentice.org
13
Liberal arts education with apprenticeship opportunities offered perhaps in last semester of Junior yr., last semester Senior year. Students need a solid foundation in arts and sciences, learning how to communicate effectively, solve problems, ask good questions, think about big issues from different perspectives. College should prepare one for a career and a thirst for lifelong learning, not just a job. Jobs become obsolete. Flexible skill sets that can adapt to an ever-changing employment landscape are priceless.
4
@La Mer College is not the only place those skills are learned. As someone who ran an apprenticeship program for dog trainers through my business, the people that I chose already had those skills and they were honed while developing the skills they needed to be successful trainers and business people.
Dog training, if done right, is not some low level job. I made well into the six figure range before I retired. I didn't get that far by lacking the skill set you think is so important but I didn't have to go to college to learn it.
1
@mhfurgason Agree. I don't think colleges actually teach those skills to most. Largely the ones who excel learned these meta cognitive habits much earlier, in highschool and at home if they had a certain upbringing. And in the era of job obsolescence it isn't going to be a liberal arts degree that saves you. It's your demonstrated ability to pick up new skill sets. Which is exactly what successful internship completion and hire demonstrate.
4
@Eb and I would say they learned those skills even earlier than high school. For example, good Montessori schools teach early elementary students all sorts of "soft" skills like conflict resolution, prioritization, and self-directed work.
2
Tuition or indentured servitude - the choice is yours.
It is true that a college education is an end in itself and provides for a well-rounded education. But we push far too many young people toward college who don't want to be there, cannot afford to be there, incur a lot of debt to be there, and then cannot find a job afterward.
This vocational/apprenticeship model is a great alternative and is already working well in other countries. In Switzerland, for example, young people are channeled into a college track or a vocational track around age 14. College is basically free, but very competitive and not the right path for everyone. The vocational track combines practical high school courses combined with an apprenticeship, so people graduate high school (at 19) with a good set of practical skills and a few years work experience. They move directly into well paid jobs as plumbers, accountants, carpenters, lab techs and many other fields. Very, very few of those people are unemployed.
11
All things being equal, I'd rather have a plumber with a college degree than one without one.
But a university is not vo-tech. It is an end in itself - to be an educated person who knows about math, science, literature, philosophy, history, art and some foreign language.
PS I learned basics of construction trades, wood and metal working and drafting in 7th and 8th grade, in industrial arts!
3
Abraham Lincoln didn't go to law school, or college. Lots to be said for on the job training. In a lot of ways, I'd rather have a lawyer with the determination and smarts to do it the hard way.
5
I'd rather have a lawyer who knew the law.
3
@Patricia
I think Lincoln knew the law. I can think of a lot of lawyers who went to law school I'd trust less with my case.
1
As a software engineer, I stopped reading once I read the part where they seemed to be advocating apprenticeship for software engineers. There is a lot you are taught in a university engineering program that you never learn in a bootcamp or on the job training, and it makes you a much better engineer. While it’s possible to be a good engineer without going to school for it, it’s much more difficult to do without the background and the engineers I know who don’t have it typically have large gaps in their knowledge that can, at times, be detrimental. Better universities also discuss things like ethics in engineering, which is incredibly important when building software that presents a potential physical or emotional safety risk to the user (e.g., self-driving cars, aviation systems, apps that are addictive or bullying). The type of training an apprentice receives should be given to junior engineers who already have their basics down; the majority of junior positions in this field already require several years of experience, which is ridiculous. In my opinion, the focus should be on making school more affordable and accessible, and not driving people away from formal education that will teach them to fully understand the potential ramifications of their actions.
13
This is exactly what my kids did. No college debt and work that they love.
2
@Jane D Glad they are happy at their jobs. What do they do?
2
I worked for a Big 4 CPA firm for many years and had frequent interaction with our London office. At least half the partners I worked with's formal education ended at age 17 when they graduated from grammar school (selective public high schools). They then articled (apprenticed) with a local chartered accountant for five years and became chartered accountants after passing the exam. Then they went at work for our firm and rose to positions of success and respect. And along the way they acquired at least as much culture and social grace as their college educated American counterparts.
9
Apprenticeships, service and applied learning are wonderful ideas!!
But, an often forgotten mechanism to avoid college debt is to go to an institution you can afford. In New York, for example, attending a State University or City University is tuition-free for anyone from a low or middle-income family. The "Excelsior Scholarship" is a fantastic opportunity!
10
In finance you have bookkeepers : accountants : controllers : VPs Finance.
These folks are doomed to be bookkeepers for their entire life.
As long as that is their endgame goal then sure - more 'apprentice' training for everyone - just be aware - learning the surface level of a software package is not coding nor is it being a software engineer.
6
@SteveRR Well, my sister dropped out of college at 19, got a job as a bookkeeper, and became a Sr VP and CFO at ADP, from which she recently retired. She now works as a consultant training CFOs.
4
While other countries feel it is more important to improve higher education but we are encouraging young Americans to make more money instead of having a better education. How are we going to compete with other countries? In the long run we will suffer. I only had a high school education and I regret that I was unable to pay college tuition so I decided to work as a janitor all my life. Which one is better? A janitor or a professor? Wake up American young people and their parents. Who invented the computer? A janitor? Microsoft guy and the Facebook guy never finished their college education that doesn't mean they are our role models for our country's future.Chinese always considers education is more important than money.
7
This, so much. I can teach a smart kid how to do my job & earn 6 figures in about 8 - 16 months.
3
@mcomfort I agree. The converse is also true, I work with many people with degrees who are absolutely terrible. They chose a career for which it turns out they are not suited at all. Maybe the ideal is a combination of college and apprentice. Just because someone has the degree does not mean they are good at a profession they chose when they were 17 and had no experience.
2
Over 20 years ago, as a transcriptionist at Sutter Hospital, I had the opportunity for paid on the job training, including associated college courses, to become a radiologic technologist. At the time, I didn’t want to “go back to school” so soon after earning what has turned out to be a useless BA from UC Davis. It’s a missed opportunity I’ve often regretted.
7
Sometimes industries change or your company changes hands- and then you have to have a BA degree of some sort for working in a field. and liberal arts education expands your mind
2
Wonderful. So now we'll have a person who is largely ignorant about his own culture and history, and about science, designing software for humans who are products of their own culture and history, and whose health care needs require the application of science. What could go wrong there?
Hasn't taken college-level chemistry or biology, yet he can write health care software. Hmmmm.
6
@Patricia hmmm...our current education system has produced our current health care system which is overpriced, elitist and not immune to bad care and practice.
by the way, a person who is largely ignorant about his own culture and history and about science sitting in the oval office. Kinda hurts your argument.
4
We have a high school senior. If money is tight but you want a good education it seems that 2 years at community college followed by 2 years at a state college can offer a 4 year degree for reasonable money.
I'm not against appreticeships, but I would worry that the experience might be too narrow and you'd lose the depth of math and core engineering tuition.
A combination of community college plus apprenticeship / intern work might be the sweet spot.
11
It's important to pay attention to state politics if we want state colleges that are affordable. This has become a problem in California. We all need to be more active in making sure that state colleges are affordable.
2
Like it or not, many employers are part of the college debt problem. Most jobs require at minimum a bachelor’s degree to make it past the applicant tracking system. In addition, some hiring managers, recruiters, and human resources personnel will not even consider hiring an applicant without a degree, and on top of that, some employers will not promote current employees if they do not have a bachelor’s degree. Of course it depends on the industry, but this is a widespread problem.
8
@Charlotte Napper I get stuck in this barrel all too often. At 57 yrs old, even if I had a degree in computers it would have been on punch cards. On the other hand, give me someone who is bright and willing and I can teach them in a week how to get started.
2
I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone who is not a scion of the idle rich, or heavily subsidized by a financial aid program, would attend a college - particularly a second or third tier school with none of the ‘cachet’ of the top ten or twenty schools — that charges $45,000 a year in tuition, like St. Louis University. With the additional cost of modest housing and other expenses, you’re looking at at least $65,000 a year, likely more. Quite a few state schools offer quality educational programs for a small fraction of $45,000 a year; and if your own state system doesn’t offer what you want, a year or two of residence in another state will usually qualify you for in-state tuition there. And there’s nothing wrong with taking a gap year or two before college - if nothing else, to work, get a better idea what you want to do, and save a bit for undergraduate school expenses. The University of Washington in Seattle, for instance, is a well-regarded school, with resident undergraduate tuition around $12,000 a year.
The multiple six figures you save on undergraduate tuition alone will mean graduating with little or no debt, or perhaps with a nest egg to apply to a home, a small business, travel or whatever after graduation.
These kids and their families have been sold a bill of goods. It doesn’t have to cost $300,000 to complete four years of undergraduate school.
38
An apprenticeship in a union construction trade provides good wages, good benefits and a fair work environment.
9
@willlegarre Except for women, you mean. Unions need to get their act together there. And how does one land one of these apprenticeships? I've heard nepotism is involved.
When they tried to get the nepotism out of the Los Angeles Fire Department, the county's application software got hacked so that anyone not personally recommended by a union member had its submit date changed to post-deadline.
Hundreds of applications marked officially late did however arouse suspicion, sothis scam came out in the press.
This is the kind of problem that has to be solved before this union apprentice thing becomes useful to people not already in the "in crowd."
5
@Patricia Patricia, I live in the Deep South, and we need union members badly, so there is no nepotism involved, as there might be up North, where I've on occasion worked using my traveler's card. There were women working there and there are women working in my Local #177 plumbers and pipefitters out of Brunswick, GA. There are good women fitters and welders just as there are bad men fitters and welders. As in almost any job women may be harassed, but, to my knowledge, not in my Local, or certainly not by me.
1
Most high school students know by the time they are seniors whether college is for them. We should enable as many as possible to attend; it's central to creating a literate society full of curious citizens with interests beyond their own immediate sphere.
Those for whom college is not the preferred option need trade schools, apprenticeships, and a spectrum of options that give them training while still exposing them in varying degrees to the accumulated knowledge of nature and culture that elevates us.
Society needs to take an interest in all our youth and help them find their niche. They are the future. Treating them like another resource to be exploited by piling them up with debt they can never repay or leaving them uneducated and unskilled in low-wage jobs is a criminal waste of their human potential.
14
@Brian Stewart
"it's central to creating a literate society full of curious citizens with interests beyond their own immediate sphere."
Unfortunately, that describes a nightmare world for the Trump supporters who make up 43% of the electorate.
A lot of people just fail to see any value at all in human civilization beyond the basic electrical and phone and media technology that personally benefits them. They don't care where the things they rely on came from. And they have no desire to think ahead to where the next advance will come from.
That's the Trump world, slashing funding for science as if there really is nothing in science that could ever benefit them.
5
@Patricia
Fortunately, 43% < 50%!
1
My granddaughter who has dual citizenship will graduate university with no debt. She may decide to go on to medical school like her cousins. No debt. And she’s bilingual.
1
Sounds great, but as usual you're mining the whole population for about a 1 to 2% yield of competent workers. Like coding in Appalachia, these schemes focus on industries which require people with talent, whereas it's the people with no or limited talent who are being ripped off by the colleges. They are then further defrauded by employers who demand higher degrees for the most basic jobs, simply because having a bachelor's degree is no discriminant these days.
9
Marie Cini worries that the apprentice system, which is alive and well in Germany and other countries, could create a "two-tier system, where you have people who can afford to go to the elite colleges, who get the networks to move into a great career, while you have lower-level pathways for everyone else." I have news for her. We have that already. It's called the Ivy league, and everything else.
23
@Regina Valdez
The competition for Harvard now is so ridiculous, it's between a bunch of people who pretty much ALL deserve to go to Harvard. The idea that the Harvard-qualified students who were rejected should have to settle for a lower path in their professional careers is very rankling to me.
Maybe the problem is that our talented and ambitious high school student population has grown, but the number of top-tier colleges has not.
And partly thanks to mass incarceration and other punitive trends in state-level politics, state colleges are no longer all that affordable compared with private schools.
“The danger is that we’ll create a two-tier system, where you have people who can afford to go to the elite colleges, who get the networks to move into a great career, while you have lower-level pathways for everyone else,”
I'm confused. I'm pretty sure that IS the system we have in place.
29
I got a job as a Software Developer thanks to LaunchCode back 2014, and I fully credit it with allowing me to transition into a high-paying, secure career. It truly changed my life.
However, while apprenticeships/bootcamps can open doors, there are definite disadvantages in comparison to formal study, at least with respect to Tech. Although it is generally true that skills matter more than credentials, I have noticed a strong bias toward formal Computer Science education. For example, most job interviews have some component of solving algorithmic questions on the spot. These sorts of problems are covered ad nauseum in the classroom, but they can be extremely difficult to solve if you are primarily self-taught.
Another issue is that most software bootcamps teach you a relatively narrow set of skills related to Web Development. It is true there is a shortage of software developer jobs, but most of these openings are for people with Mid to Senior level experience. The job market for entry-level web developer jobs has become extremely saturated. Worryingly, many job placement rates for Software boot-camps have taken a sharp turn downward. For example, Hack Reactor, one of the most selective bootcamps, once boasted a job-placement rate of 98% within 90 days of completing the program. That number is now down to 39%. It is becoming increasingly difficult to break into Tech, especially for those lacking traditional credentials.
This is why I got a Master's.
21
Where I work, we have shipboard supervisors who make $250k per year, without a college degree. (Shoutout to American Maritime Officers Union). It was the first time I saw reverse educational attainment, where college-educated officers would discourage their kids from attending college. Instead, the kids would garner respect in the field by working up from the deckplates, the hard way.
4
@Doug Squirrel
"Respect in the field" -- this assumes their kids *want* to go into that field.
What if the kids want to be doctors, engineers, medical researchers, social workers, writers, or, heaven forbid, teach school?
Almost none of those people are going to pull down $250k, ever, in their careers.
If it's all about making $250k, then forget grade school and high school along with college, because there will be no teachers.
1
It appears that so many are against appretinceships? Why is that? It's another avenue for people to earn a living. Not every job requires a degree and to constantly push everyone to that route does a disservice to those who would rather do something else.
During my time in the Marine Corps (I'm still active) I have completed three apprenticeship programs through the United States Military Apprenticeship Program in three different technical fields (I'm an electronics technician, currently instructing advanced electronics at the Marine Corps Communications and Electronics School) that would allow me to make a very good living when I retire, all without a college degree.
In fact I have already been scouted for jobs, some of which require a degree but will take experience in lieu of a degree.
College is not the end all be all for everyone.
7
@Amone
In the military it's pretty hard to dole out apprenticeships based on personal or family relationships. There's oversight on that.
One reason why people suspect apprenticeships outside of the military is because there is zero oversight to ensure that they are given out fairly and equally, without race, gender, or other kinds of discrimination.
Also, if you've been learning advanced electronics, I hope to heck they made you take a year or two of basic college physics first. That's necessary to understand how and why electronics exist and function.
I worry about all these technical workers nowadays who've never had to pass college-level physics.
In the case of someone whose talent is computer science, a degree may be worth at least some debt, because the jobs you can attain with a degree may be superior and pay much more over your work life. I know a student just graduating with a master's in computer science who had 9 job offers. The employers were competing to "win" this student and one increased their offer by 50k after already offering a generous salary.
As a lawyer, I may be biased. But I worry about these appreciates passing what is widely known to be the most difficulty bar exam (CA) simply by working under another attorney for a few years. Many who have undergraduate degrees and go to law school still have great difficulty with this exam. I hope there is a plan in place to train these people for the test. Law school as it exists is not as efficient as it could be but this is not the answer. I would prefer something like a PA program, 5 years including undergraduate and the professional degree, working and getting paid while studying but also with a robust classroom component.
10
Apprenticeships can be an excellent route to get a skillset without incurring debt. The risk is that that skillset will set you up for one career route.
In contrast, college is intended to teach you how to learn and think. Only about a third of college graduates get a job related to their major, so they need to be adaptable.
Lifelong learning and adaptability are important, both for advancement today and for employability in the future. Automation, robots and artificial intelligence are putting half of the current jobs at risk (PEW, McKensy, Brookings, AEI and more). Displaced workers will have to reskill and often follow a very different career in the new (more sophisticated) jobs that are being created. College prepares you for that better than an apprenticeship will.
11
This *may* work out in people's favor. But *more* people are going to college and getting degrees - not less. In 20 years, will this still look like a good idea?
3
@Chris Yes, because lawyers, doctors and all sorts of other professionals did not have to get all this education and pay out the ying yang to get it back prior to the 1940s. There should be a path for natural talent that does not include the all to deficient path of years and years of college with mortgaging the first born.
3
Apprenticeship is a great thing that deserves more consideration from both employers and employees. I went through an apprenticeship myself, I was able to earn a living while also learning valuable job skills, becoming a journeyman and earning far more than any non-apprenticeship jobs I ever had. Not everybody needs a college education, despite the experts advise Some people just don't do well in a school setting, and on the job training where you are actually learning by doing while being taught the fundamentals on a daily basis is one alternative.
12
I advocate strongly for this apprenticeship program.
My youngest son would have benefited much by being able to veer away from his father's occupation of body work and be able to use his talents in small engine repair. Too often this section of education is infiltrated with scammers like the body work schools and the truck driver schools that leave you without a salary while vaguely promising a future running your own business.
Society periodically goes thru the pangs of vocational emphasis in high school but these attempts always fall to the expense involved of setting up genuine vocations departments.
We provided genuine training thru the CCC prior to WWII, military training after and now have committed to imprisonment of youth we failed to train. Will we do better this time?
14
I would say no to an apprenticeship. Binding tuition payments to a job will become indentured servitude. Watch how quickly your already weakened labor rights get even weaker.
16
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that more blue-collar jobs are requiring college degrees than ever before. To even collect baskets in the parking lot of a grocery store, you'll need a masters degree. To flip burgers at McDonalds, you'll need a masters degree. WSJ is saying this economic trend is accelerating, not de-accelerating.
18
Maine’s Dept of Labor is partnering with Maine companies to build our workforce. It’s a wonderful place to live, work and play. Check it out!
4
As Americans have to work harder and harder and meet ever increasing productivity goals, we have lost the important role of apprenticeships and mentorships - folks who take the time to teach and train the next generation. Assuming a fair deal (no exploitation like what you hear about today's internships), this is a promising development for today's youth.
7
“The danger is that we’ll create a two-tier system, where you have people who can afford to go to the elite colleges, who get the networks to move into a great career, while you have lower-level pathways for everyone else,”
That's what we have already. These apprenticeships are a great way to circumvent the Educational Industrial Complex.
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Having grown up in Germany but living here in the United States where I have worked for over 30 years as an educator in a variety of environments from graduate school, college, public high school and even a women's prison, I have for a long time bemoaned the fact of such a limited choice of education for young people that has excluded apprenticeships, a source of training for many in Germany. Moreover, I have bristled at the social prejudice against menial workers and those who did not go the college route. In a country that prides itself to give EVERYONE the chance to economic and social improvement, the criminal cost of higher education and resultant debt burden on the young and their parents and the economic hypocrisy that has kept opportunity out of reach for many are APPALLING facts.
It is high time that industry and corporate America finally wakes up to the fact that a college education is not the only or even the best way to keep society renewing itself productively.
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@Beate You nailed it. It is criminal that we promote the myth that college should be for everyone. No, it's clearly not. We need an apprenticeship program modeled after Germany's. We need to get past our obsession with credentials as the only proof that we are worthy of meaningful or valued employment. I know a plumber who never finished college who reads poetry and who makes almost as much as your average IT worker, who does NOT read poetry. Let's get rid of the stereotyping on start valuing committed, enthusiastic workers in "new collar" jobs.
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Apprenticeships can be fine in some jobs, but it's simply not a substitute for a college education for many jobs. Would you really like a physical therapist without an appropriate college degree working on your knees after knee replacement? Further, for apprenticeships, companies and government must be willing to shoulder at least some of the burden for apprenticeship programs which include paying apprentices which is routinely done in Europe. Or should we go back to the good old days 150 years ago where apprenticeships were just another name for free child labor (with maybe a little food and a blanket thrown in? The whole notion that children from less than well to do families should be content with with "their lot" and not expect to go to college smacks of the aristocracy, suspicion of higher education (Trump's I love the poorly educated) and buys in to the phony narrative that kids from poorer families are just "naturally" stupid.
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Librarianship should take a page from this playbook.
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Often corporations stipulate a college degree is required, even though it truly may not be. I think that the requesting manager feels more important if he/she is overseeing a department that has a higher median education level. A college degree doesn't promise a dedicated worker, strong morals, or integrity. Hire character, train the skill is I heard somewhere.
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@Michael Though I like your point, I think it's cynical to think that some managers prefer those with college educations because is makes them feel more important. Frankly, writing skills are in short supply, and I believe it really is the case that the college educated tend to be better writers than those who never went to college. This isn't because some special technique was learned at college - something that could be learned at some night class - it's because people learn in general to be critical thinkers, to organize their thoughts, etc.
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@Michael
Or the requesting manager knows that if his or her hires are up to their eyeballs in student debt, they will be more compliant.
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My father a member of the greatest generation was a Mechanical Engineer. No college, no high school diploma. Training in the Army to start and years at General Electric. His last job he worked on government contracts for years with secret security clearance.
This was the past and is a path to the future. But it will be very difficult to break the hiring and promotion obsession of this country with college degrees.
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@Heidi
Your story leaves out all the reasons why your father was able to do that: WWII and the need for tons of engineers, and the army training that gave him the rudimentary knowledge to start working in mechanical engineering. In WWII it was sometimes necessary for medics to do emergency surgery, but who would today say forget medical school. That he got "secret security clearance" has nothing whatsoever to do with skill at mechanical engineering. And the skills now required for mechanical engineering are much higher (this is the digital age) than the are much higher than they were decades ago.
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@Paul from Oakland It could be argued that the skills required for mechanical engineering today are simpler, given the power of software tools such as RISA and Inventor. Yes, a licensed engineer, presumably with an engineering degree, would oversee the work of others, but there is a place for apprenticed employees in the mechanical engineering field who do not have college educations. I have found that many younger, college-educated employees don't seem to think of the workplace as a continuation of their education - they don't think they are apprenticing, and don't appreciate guidance of any breadth. If an apprentice of the kind discussed in this article were to actually want to be mentored, and were to maintain that attitude for at least a substantial portion of their career, this would promote a healthy work culture and presumably be good for both worker satisfaction and the bottom line.
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@Paul from Oakland His army training was in radar in the army. Then he served in Patten's army with the ground troops. College education wasn't the norm, the need for a salary to support the family was. His main training was with GE, on the job.
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