Addressing the College Credibility Crisis

“Skepticism about higher education has reached a fever pitch in the United States, to the point that ‘College is a scam’ is a popular meme on TikTok and YouTube,” writes Nicole LaPorte in Town & Country.

This fever pitch reflects the fact that many Americans, including young people and employers, no longer believe a college degree is the best pathway to a good job and adult success. A Wall Street Journal/NORC survey found that more than half of Americans (56%) believe a college degree is not worth the cost. Such views are strongest among those aged 18-to-34, as well as college graduates themselves.

Americans want other education and training pathways to prepare young people for the world beyond high school. One important—and underappreciated—avenue is apprenticeships, which typically integrate paid, on-the-job training with formal classroom instruction, a learn-and-earn approach that provides both school and workplace experience. As National Apprenticeship Week, a celebration of the value and importance of these types of opportunities, draws to a close, policymakers and other education and training stakeholders should re-double efforts to expand this approach.  

Demand for Alternatives

People desperately want an alternative to the conventional college approach, and that demand isn’t new. Polls have long found enormous support for apprenticeships in particular, including a favorable view from more than nine out of ten Americans. And 62% say apprenticeships actually make people more employable than college does.

Gen Z high schoolers agree. A poll by the nonprofit Educational Credit Management Corporation reports that half (51%) of today’s high schoolers are considering a college degree, a drop of more than 10% from before the pandemic. And 65% say learning after high school should be done on the job through internships or apprenticeships.

That sentiment is nowhere more apparent than among working-class Americans without college degrees, who want more practical education and training pathways to good jobs, according to a Progressive Policy Institute/YouGov poll. Given three choices for proposals that would best enable them to get ahead, nearly three-quarters prefer “more public investment in apprenticeships and career pathways to help non-college workers acquire better skills” rather than options centered on stronger labor unions or forgiving student loans. Likewise, a plurality of working-class voters see “degree requirements for jobs that don’t need them” as the largest barrier to people like them getting a good job today. Unsurprisingly, more than half (56%) said that forgiving student debt is unfair “to the majority of Americans who don’t get college degrees and will increase costs for students and taxpayers alike over the long term.”

Labor market evidence suggests this appetite reflects a changing reality. Ten years after graduating, 45% of college grads are underemployed in jobs not requiring a degree, according to another study. Many employers are eliminating the college degree as the gatekeeper credential for jobs, shifting from degree-based to skills-based hiring.

Apprenticeships Old and New

America has a long and important history of non-college pathways that needs rediscovering. Records from America’s colonial period place the first official apprenticeships back to at least 1716 in Philadelphia. The first U.S.-registered apprenticeship system was created in 1911 in Wisconsin. The federal government established authority over apprenticeship programs in 1937, while also giving states the option to register and oversee programs.

Since then, these registered programs have offered paid work experience, wage increases, participation in classroom instruction, and a nationally recognized credential upon completing the program. Around 90% of apprentices who complete a registered apprenticeship retain employment with an average annual salary of $80,000. That draws a sharp contrast with internships—the programs that typically introduce college students to the working world—which are usually short-term, entry-level, unpaid jobs without any industry credential.

Today, the U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world in apprenticeship programs. Here, 27,000 registered programs enroll around 594,000 individuals whose average age is 29, and roughly 70% of these apprenticeships are in construction trades. That represents only 0.3% of the workforce, placing the U.S. at the bottom of apprenticeship enrollment among developed countries. And it isn’t close. For context, in countries like Austria and Sweden, that percentage is nearly 15 times higher.

Encouragingly, we’re starting to see some inroads, particularly outside of the construction trades. Youth apprenticeships, while often unpaid, include work-based learning with classroom instruction like registered apprenticeships, and typically involve dual enrollment across high schools and post-secondary institutions. Many of these youth apprenticeships are in fields like advanced manufacturing, information technology, and logistics. The digital news hub Work Shift dubs these “new collar apprenticeships.”

Youth apprenticeship programs are growing and have bipartisan backing across states as diverse politically as California, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. The U.S. Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration is launching a first-ever Federal Youth Apprentice Pathway pilot program to model how federal agencies can partner with organizations to create career pathways for federal jobs. And Congress is considering several bipartisan apprenticeship bills, including the first-ever Youth Apprenticeship Advancement Act—a grant program to expand youth apprenticeships for school districts and employers.

Youth apprenticeships are being integrated into at least two other current education initiatives: career education and apprenticeship degrees. The former is a foundation for participating in a successful apprenticeship. The latter gives apprenticeships a specific direction. These types of programs highlight the diversity of educational and professional opportunities that apprenticeships, broadly understood, can provide.

While career education programs expand opportunity by preparing students for successful participation in and completion of apprenticeships, apprenticeship degrees expand opportunity on the tail end. This approach can be part of dual-education programs that allow individuals to be apprentices and attend college, erasing the perceived conflict of the two. For example, the United Kingdom has developed an apprenticeship degree, an earn-and-learn program that takes three to six years and leads to a debt-free bachelor’s or master’s degree.

This degree-granting model is being adopted in U.S. K-12 education to create debt-free teacher apprenticeships that award bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Currently, the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Education support 37 states and territories that offer these programs, up from only two states in 2022. Over 100 registered-apprenticeship teacher programs exist, and over 3,000 teacher apprentices have been trained.

The apprenticeship model is also being adapted to be an alternative-licensing pathway for graduates who have completed professional school, including law school—addressing a considerable professional challenge that plagues countless industries. For example, the Utah Supreme Court is considering a proposal that would allow graduates of American Bar Association-accredited law schools to bypass the bar exam by instead completing 240 hours under the mentorship of a qualified attorney along with other requirements.

This might be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to more dynamic apprenticeships. Organizations like RTI International, the National Center to Grow Your Own, and The Pathways Alliance have been created to support many of these implementation efforts. Combining apprenticeships with higher education allows colleges to “unbundle” the four-year degree into building blocks, or stackable credentials, earned while working and leading to new types of associate or bachelor’s degrees.

Opportunity Pluralism Lies Ahead

What these apprenticeship programs need is more institutional support from policymakers, employers, and other education stakeholder to allow them to flourish. Ryan Craig, author of Apprentice Nation, suggests that third-party organizations called “apprenticeship intermediaries” should be set up to facilitate this effort, which can be public institutions like community colleges, non-profit organizations like Chambers of Commerce or union associations, or for-profit organizations like commercial staffing companies.

This will allow employers to “try before they buy” an apprentice, by paying a fee to the intermediary for recruiting, training, and matching employees with firms, lightening the investment for potentially apprentice-curious companies. In 2022, California created the nation’s first state-based funding formula for apprenticeships that pays intermediaries for every apprentice they train.

Healthy market competition will force apprenticeship programs to brand and market themselves as uniquely effective pathways to good jobs. This can also create specializations among firms, from new screening and assessment instruments, including digital learning and employment records; to full-service counseling and advisory services; and diverse mentors and classroom instructors.

Americans want K-12 schools, colleges, employers, and other stakeholders to think creatively and differently about success and the many pathways to attaining it. This approach creates what I call opportunity pluralism, where these diverse pathways lead to an increase in good jobs and human flourishing. This approach makes the nation’s opportunity structure more pluralistic. It differs from the old vocational education that placed students into different tracks based chiefly on family background. Apprenticeships open doors rather than constraining individuals’ choices.

Apprenticeship programs are built on an opportunity equation that includes what individuals know (knowledge), whom they know (relationships), and who they are (identity). They build profitable knowledge, priceless relationships, and a vocation that elevates self-worth and human dignity. We need more of them.