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Comment by KamiCrit | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame the apprenticeship culture isn't as prominent these days. Are we really fine with keeping the torch in the last generation?

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It is very much alive in Germany, and this is regularly mentioned as a reason why the economy there is doing relatively well. [0]

From the German wikipedia, I see there's a school that educates glass blowers, and they have various areas of specialisation. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Apprentic... [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasbläser

Even there it's definitely not as robust as it used to be, though it's not declining as quickly as elsewhere. I'm more familiar with the Danish system, which used to be somewhat modeled after the German one, but has rapidly changed over the past 20 years. The main problem is that, of two higher-education tracks that were previously both seen as a path to a stable, well-paying job, the vocational/training and the university tracks, pay and employment rates have diverged rapidly to the point where university is now clearly seen as the better path. Lots of reasons, ranging from automation to outsourcing to immigration. In the 1970s in Denmark a skilled machinist working at a shipyard made more than a typical office worker, and had high job security. But that is no longer the case. Every shipyard in Denmark has now closed, for one thing, which led to many of the people who used to have good jobs there struggling to find new work.

There are definitely still niches where the vocational path can get you a very high-paying job, but as a whole it's seen as a riskier bet than it used to be, so is getting less popular. There's also a feeling that even picking a vocational area that looks hot now is too risky, because in 10 years it might share the fate of the shipping industry. (A similar story can be told about the steel industry in the US, which was once seen as a very good career path, but now tends to serve as more of a object lesson for why not to follow the vocational-skills path.)

Most plumbers and electricians I know make a lot more money than the infinite number of "social media specialists" or "copywriters" I know. The problem isn't risk, it's perception of self-worth. Many millennial-types view the trades as beneth them (as they pour coffee at Starbucks waiting for some value to be realized from their worthless gender-studies degree.)

I don't think these millennial-types are any different in that regard than their Gen-X predecessors.

Except of course that adult Gen-X slackers, who are more likely to be a homeowner, have had a lot more time to learn what a good plumber or electrician is worth.

It's not like it's a choice, in almost every field in which one can do an apprenticeship, one has to do it to be allowed to work professionally. In combination with an age limit of 30 for most governmental support during apprenticeship this leads to a very static workforce in which people cannot easily change specialization later in life.

I also doubt that apprenticeships contribute much to an economy that is mostly driven by high-tech exports.

> It's a shame

A shame? Quite an understatement. Sadly short-termism is the message du jour. I don't have the first idea how skills that once took a ten year apprenticeship can be sensibly preserved, or why apprenticeships have so comprehensively died. "Modern apprenticeships", or whatever your region calls them, don't provide anything near the same depth.

As this article shows, even the places that actually need those rare skills cannot see far enough ahead to recruit a shadow apprentice.

It's not just the niche skills that get lost, it's the problem solving abilities that went with them.

Exactly this. The US educational obsession with "everyone should go to college" has led to both inflated college costs as wel as a perceived lower respect for the trades. Asking a "marketing specialist" to hang a simple sheet of drywall would be like asking a giraffe to make coffee.

That's not just in the US. The UK has the same issue.

I doubt that the "trades" ever had much respect - its just that those bright kids would have left school at 16 and done the vocational route all go to uni now.

Apprenticeships in the UK have to pick from those that are left and deal with the damage done by TV shows and super markets saying you can do an apprenticeship in shelf stacking - when in fact its just cheap labour.

One problem I've seen is the reduction in the variety of high school courses. If you don't spend the time doing work in shop, you might not know that you really enjoy it and make the decision to try and get an apprenticeship. It's not just shop, it's a variety of things.

I recently found out that Chicago doesn't offer any shop classes to most of its high school students anymore. I learned this from a former shop teacher who has been forced to switch into teaching computer courses like Microsoft Office. Students used to learn Office by doing, now they have to learn to live with not being able to do much of anything physical with their hands unless they go to vocational school when they're 18+.

When I was in grade 7 I moved to a new town and therefore a new school. They actually had a requirement that everybody take both home economics and shop class. It was actually a combined course, for the first half the year you did one and the second half the other. Which was good for me because while I could cook and do shop, I couldn't sew. I still use the spice rack I made back then.

I thought it was a pretty good idea since it meant that everybody would learn the basics of cooking, sewing, and woodworking.

My high schools I went to all had some sort of vocational courses and if you weren't doing the advanced courses (in preparation for university), you were kind of expected that you'd do some of them. I moved for my final year of high school and while I was disappointed I wouldn't get to do another year of programming, they did have a electronics course (I built a small radio). I later learned that a few years after I started university, they cancelled the electronics course.

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