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Comment by mildweed | Hacker News Reader

Years ago I wanted to make an apprenticeship locator / pairing service website. It also was going to have apprenticeship certification mixed in there. I believe apprenticeships done well can replace the majority of (but certainly not all) college degrees. Completing a certified apprenticeship should be as good of an endorsement as a college degree (or better!). So many fields, it would probably be better: advertising, insurance, journalism, programming.

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.

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> Completing a certified apprenticeship should be as good of an endorsement as a college degree (or better!).

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.

Agreed. I've got a B.S. in Biochemistry and I'm sad about all the liberal arts classes I missed out on. I audited a philosophy class and I still think about it often.

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.

Remedial work's always there, sure. But you have to know what you don't know, at least in outline.

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.

The blood of this Site has been 'streamlined' with Bootcamps.

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.

> 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.

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