Fixing the “Supply-Side” of Career Education: The Role of Apprenticeship

Harvard economist and education researcher David Deming has a new piece out in The Atlantic with some ideas on how to create “supply-side education” programs that will open pathways to the middle class for people without a bachelor’s degree. Deming provides some healthy skepticism about the impact of “skills-based hiring” strategies that remove bachelor degree requirements from job requirements. Will they really change how and whom employers hire, or just add an additional step to the process? What else is needed to open new pathways to economic security?

Deming’s answer to that last question is disappointing—and also familiar. He makes the case for a federal version of “FastForward,” a Virginia-based financial aid program that offers short-term (8-16 week) training programs for local, in-demand jobs as the best way to buoy the economic prospects of workers without college degrees. Deming cites an “early evaluation” of FastForward that found graduates increased their annual wages by an average of $4,000. What he doesn’t include is a baseline from which to judge the value of that increase. FastForward is not a new program: What are the longer-term earning trajectories of graduates? How many go on to earn family-sustaining wages? If we’re going to base federal policy on a state program, we need more evidence than a preliminary evaluation.

Thankfully, there is a robust body of research on the value of short-term training and non-degree credentials that consistently points to the same findings: Their labor market value varies considerably, some generate short-term increases in earnings for adults without a college degree, and the majority do not lead to sustained income gains or economic security. Short-term credentials for non-college graduates are most prevalent in gender-segregated occupations (healthcare, personal care, and child care for women; non-union transportation, welding, and manufacturing for men). In female-dominated occupations, starting wages are quite low and there is little evidence that a non-degree credential provides a first step on a career pathway (see this meta-analysis of career pathways programs from the Department of Labor and this randomized controlled trial evaluation of the “Health Professions Opportunity Grant” program from the Department of Health and Human Services). In male-dominated occupations, earnings are slightly higher, but so are turnover and injury rates.

Despite the failure of short-term training programs to put people on a path toward economic security, they remain popular with policymakers on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps that is because they provide a seemingly simple solution to a complex problem: the prevalence of low-wage and precarious jobs in the American labor market. And while programs like “FastForward” do not build pathways into good jobs, they do work well for employers with high turnover rates—in nursing homes, hospitals, and non-union construction and transportation firms. They provide a steady supply of freshly trained workers for jobs that employers are always hiring for—because people are always quitting them.

Is there another approach that could put people into a good job and on a career pathway without having to get a bachelor’s degree? Deming points out that apprenticeship is a highly effective education and employment model that pays people to learn and consistently puts them into good jobs. But he then dismisses it as “bespoke and expensive.”

More expensive for whom? The large majority of apprenticeship programs do not cost taxpayers or apprentices anything. Employers do have to pay apprentices while they learn on the job, and sometimes they pay for the classroom instruction components of a program. They also have to comply with the regulations and requirements of a Registered Apprenticeship program, which can take time and effort. But should we not expect employers to invest in training their own workers? Under the Virginia FastForward program, by contrast, students pay a third of the training program’s tuition, and taxpayers pick up the remaining two-thirds. Employers pay nothing.

It is true that our system of Registered Apprenticeship is quite small, with just over 650,000 apprentices enrolled per year - far less than our higher education system. But it doesn’t have to be. Other countries use apprenticeships to prepare the majority of young adults for family-sustaining careers. There is nothing intrinsic to the apprenticeship model that makes it impossible to scale in other locales. Doing so will require supportive public policies and significant employer investment, but it is far from impossible.

At New America, we are working to expand this country’s apprenticeship system to provide entry into many more industries for many more young people. One way to do that is to better connect our Registered Apprenticeship system to our Career and Technical Education (CTE) system. As Deming correctly points out, we need to expand our CTE system if we want to provide more high-quality pathways to the middle class. But high-quality CTE is not short-term training programs. To the contrary, high-quality CTE puts students into structured, sequenced courses and multi-year “programs of study” that lead to rewarding careers—not unlike Registered Apprenticeship—but delivered through our public education systems. Better connecting CTE and Registered Apprenticeship could open many more opportunities for people to access apprenticeships through their high schools and community colleges. Colorado is already taking steps in this direction.

Education policies on their own cannot solve the problem of declining job quality in the United States. This will take policies that raise the minimum wage, increase public funding for care-worker wages, and strengthen worker protections, including the right to join a union. But bringing our CTE and Registered Apprenticeship systems together so that every American high school and community college student can enter a high-quality apprenticeship program that prepares them for a family-sustaining career is one way to align our education policies with the larger goal of building more pathways into the middle class.