The Rising Appeal of Apprenticeship
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I work at a creative agency in London and we started taking in apprentices a few years ago, with great success.
In my opinion, apprenticeships work best for people who either already know they are interested in a particular craft and want to specialise quickly or for people who don't know what they want at all and want to try out a career before committing.
I work in UX myself and while there is definitely a place for solid theoretical foundations, I have found that it's a field that develops so quickly that experience is much more important than knowledge. Because of this, it's very suitable for the kind of on the job training that apprenticeships offer.
Personally, I loved every minute I spent in an academic environment at university. I know it shaped my thinking and personality in very real ways and I enjoyed the freedom of doing research without direct applications (while getting my practical fix through part time jobs on the side). If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea because you are more practical, you can totally skip it if you can get a relevant apprenticeship with solid mentorship and genuine job opportunity at the end of it.
I work with two people who entered in apprenticeships at my company instead of going to university (saving a load of cash) and they both have since been offered permanent positions. I don't know how their long term career prospects are, but I would definitely hire them over a recent graduate with 0 years of experience under their belt.
Nowadays, college educations are worth basically nothing. You're not thought to be any smarter than the next guy and unless you go to a really well known institution that provides you esteem and wealthy connections, it's essentially just an advanced High School degree.
The point I'm getting at is - and I've seen this in the occasional job search I've done - the Generalist role is dead. In theory, it makes sense, wouldn't 5 people with general knowledge more slowly build a worse product than 5 different experts? Experts are always wanted and that only comes through years of dedication to that craft. And you simply cannot get that in college. On a side note... I think College is just a 6 figure right-of-passage into adulthood and learning how to feed yourself, become responsible enough to wake up on time, and find good friends.
The real advantage of a high level generalist education is it enables on the job training. Someone with a 2.5 GPA from a reputable collage can do most jobs in the US with an additional 1 year of training. But, someone with a 8th grade education plus 8 years working as a landscaper is far more limited should say a back problem force them into a more sedentary occupation.
Oh really? Which employers will pay to train you for a year?
Now a list of jobs that you can train for in a year, but which don't need a 4 year degree: truck driver, construction worker, retail employee, many restaurant staff, janitorial, basically anything in the general service industry. This is also a lot of jobs.
Maybe you could name 10-20 jobs which do fall under the general degree plus a year of training?
There is a huge realm of office jobs that take basic collage level skills. EX: Software tester, receptionist, Manager, etc. (Substitute) Teaching is another huge area that often takes collage education, but many states have a 3.0 GPA requirement.
Many companies will higher programmers without the background, granted you’re not going to make much but it's a start.
The US military for example will train you to be a welder or machinist in less than 1 year. Depending on demand the same thing can happen in private industry but you’re starting doing true grunt work.
Nursing is something of a grey area. You can quickly become an orderly without a related background and there are various levels of certifications necessary to do various types of nursing. EMT takes collage level general skills + 6 months training though again you don't need a degree just that level of basic skill.
The Police are another area that takes people without any background training and may require a degree.
PS: That's not to say some high school students could not succeed at these jobs with similar training. However the demonstrated skills associated with a collage degree are significantly higher.
I'm talking plumbers, electricians, etc. There will always be broken toilets and bad wiring.
I'd be more concerned about apprenticeship in the ship foundry that the article mentions. That seems like a much more specialized market.
Having a system that produced trained woodworkers would make this labor market much better, since most small businesses can't really afford apprentices. They could, however, likely do well to have fully trained employees available. Of the handful of cabinet makers I know, all but one of them were hobbyist woodworkers first. The one who wasn't is Swiss where he grew up and was trained in cabinetmaking instead of university.
I've not seen any equivalent programs in the US for woodworking.
If anybody wants to take this and run with it, please do. Just hit me up to brainstorm at some point, I'd love to flesh out the idea more with like-minded entrepreneurs.
It could be good way to turn out trained people. Maybe, anyway; I have my doubts. But consider that training will never provide the same kind of endorsement as a liberal education--while reasonable, if perhaps short-sighted, people may disagree, for my money that's a worse endorsement for creating well-rounded people who can be dropped into a foreign situation and thrive.
This criticism extends to the glorified tech-school approach of many bachelor-of-science degrees, thinking about it; I have a B.A. in computer science, not a B.S., and the most valuable classes I ever took, not just in my work life but my personal one, were microeconomics and political science. I wouldn't have had time to take either within a B.S. program.
However I've found that if you want to continue learning, being a programmer is a good place to be. It's pretty acceptable to read wikipedia during your breaks and we get paid enough to have guitar tutors.
A lot of my liberal arts classes were things I didn't necessarily like. But I know enough to have a framework to learn more about them and about related topics.
Who certifies these apprenticeships(assuming you're not talking about the Trades)? The typical Trades are typically handled by the State/Province.
It's easier in Trades, where things are fairly static and there's set standards.
You obviously haven't been following the National Electric Code for the past ten or so years.
I called around a couple of stores in the area (Boston) and many of the clock/watch shops have backlogs anywhere from 8 weeks to 8 months. They were all basically family-run (old husband/wife couples) and most said they were struggling to keep up with demand and that there were simply no young men entering the business.
The one guy who had an apprentice later clarified that his apprentice had been working for him for 20 years!
I wonder how/if tech might be applied to these craft-heavy markets to make things more efficient.
I'm not surprised young people aren't entering the business if their status hasn't progressed beyond "apprentice" in 20 years!
One of the more interesting is The Lititz Watch Technicum (http://lititzwatchtechnicum.org/) which is a 2 year certification program funded by Rolex.
The 555 was first sold in 1971. Why the hell would you still rely on complex mechanical linkages to track the time when you could just start believing that digital watches really are a pretty neat idea instead?
Is a coracle made from animal skins stretched over wooden frames equivalent to Cousteau Society's turbosail ship Alcyone? Could anyone sail at 65 knots without advancements in tech (sailrocket.com)?
Could I fit an entire library of books in one pocket without the technology in my Kobo?
I'm not familiar enough with horse riding to provide a better example, but the high-backed cavalry saddle and stirrup were, at the time, considered advancements in military technology. Even the fact that you can ride horses for pleasure rather than by necessity is thanks to technologies such as the automobile.
People continue to do these things, but they have not always done them in the same way. And when the newer way is better, the old way rarely survives, except as a historical curiosity. Mechanical timepieces are objectively inferior to both electromechanical timepieces and purely electronic timekeeping. There's a reason why no one has to go up twice a year to wind the mainspring on the GPS satellites.
If you don't have electricity, and you are not navigating an antique wind-powered ship, you probably don't need a mechanical timepiece.
Also, I recall, from way back in the 1980s, a digital clock that was "powered by a potato", using zinc and copper probes. Even if we lost all grid power, and solar cells, and low-head hydro, we could still manage a zinc-copper cell battery.
Didn't you see that episode of Breaking Bad?
It's nice to see this becoming more mainstream again. Learning by doing - and observing skilled workers - is a great way to learn most of the practical aspects of a trade.