Apprenticeships: Useful Alternative, Tough to Implement
cato.org
cato.org
People usually answered 'we don't want to sacrifice general problem solving skills'. (This is what I would say if I were getting paid to do something with no measurable output). Some said 'Vocational school is perceived as not getting you into college', which is true but bad.
The missing third answer is 'there's no system for bringing people with fresh job skills into schools'.
There's a great atlantic article about swimming lessons vs math lessons that said 'at the end of the exercise if you can't swim something is wrong'. The bulk of education by $ value in the US doesn't have a deliverable. (Not so for sports and music).
I've seen research which claims that parental involvement is a significant factor in the quality of public schools (though this is hard to separate from real estate prices or any other proxy for wealth/education). Maybe the right way to add a 'deliverable' to education is to treat parents as the consumer instead of students or testing authorities.
And the nice thing about them is that if you're a good problem solver, you can apply that to a lot of different careers. Whereas teaching a specific set of skills (e.g. pipe welding) may make you a great pipe welder, but guess what happens when you decide to change careers.
So I'd characterize the trade-off as:
- Focusing on general problem solving skills (assuming they can be taught) opens a lot of doors, but doesn't get you very far inside any one door.
- Focusing on trade skills opens a far more limited set of doors, but can get you farther inside the door you choose to enter.
What makes the trade-off extra tricky is that it's possible general problem solving skills cannot be taught, in the same way a high IQ cannot be taught. And, as you point out, it's much trickier to measure problem solving capacity than it is to measure whether a pipe was welded correctly.
Smart people can master skills and information in a hurry, but people are only effective if they've used their time to master a lot of skills. Can we improve G? If yes, you'll still improve someone's general effectiveness more by teaching them lots of skills than by improving their IQ 5 points.
I think many people, somewhat unfairly, view the path towards gaining trade skills as a case of simply showing up to work or class, going through the motions of practicing your specific skill, and after some period of time you simply become a master at your profession. Now, doing the aforementioned will probably get you to the competent level, but to be great at something like welding requires quite a bit of general problem solving ability in addition technical skill.
This is doubly true for those who end up starting their own businesses. I know a few welders/machinists who are working on their own now. The vast majority don't come from monied backgrounds and have a hard time raising startup capital so they end up doing things on a shoestring budget. The ones I know end up having to become at least mildly knowledgable in accounting, taxes, business regulations and things like fire code and labor laws, business contracts and sometimes even the local commercial/industrial real estate market. They do these things because they don't have the capital to hire others to do them. Despite in most cases having nothing more than a high school diploma, or some community college coursework, I would definitely say they excel at general problem solving.
Most professions used to have ways OUTSIDE of the college track to enter those professions until fairly recently.
There's tons of exceptionally smart people who could study at night and weekends and pass the Bar or the CPA exam but can't afford massive tuition to get the college approved pre-reqs for this.
And there's tons of startups who are frothing at the bit to make amazing online institutions for these people to be successful.
But thanks to regulations, some rich kid whose parents pay the tuition gets that spot because the smart but poor person doesn't have time to attend a 1:00-3:30 class because he has a job.
We complain about the health care lobby, the oil lobby..etc.
In the coming years as the only available jobs will be accessible to people with advanced knowledge and licenses..the higher education lobby is going to be a serious problem.
A lot of people believe, "everything happens for a reason," but people with practical experience don't need to believe that because they know everything happens for a reason: it's called "the cause."
Apprenticeships are the most valuable education anyone can get, but the practical aspects fly in the face of pseudo-intellectualism that passes for modern non-STEM scholarship.
Yes. It's all in the formulation. It's not for a reason, but because of a reason.
Using "for" is misleading and puts the horse before the cart: If you went to a café and met the love of your life, it's not "you went to that café for you to meet the love of your life", it's more "you met the love of your life because you went to that café".
I don't exclude the existence of things beyond the limits of my knowledge, though.
Also, the apprentice is teached on the job which is a huge benefit, since it's a real environment. Every day you learn things and how they are done in the real world.
Apprentices are however exempted from the minimum wage.
The current national minimum wage in Australia is $17.70 per hour[1], where as the 1st year apprentices in our metal fabircation workshop are on something like $12 an hour, the minimum is $10.31 for a first year in our trade. If the apprentice is over 21 they rates are different again. Apprentice pay rates increase each year.
Edit: as a sibiling comment mentioned, apprentices in Australia spend part of their work-year in school. This can either be weekly, or more typically in one or two week blocks.
Also, I should add: at least half of the 1st year apprentices I've worked with are useless for about the first six months, they're a massive time sink if they're not doing something completely repetative like cutting a thousand pieces of steel the same length, and then they'll still find a way fuck that up if you don't keep a close eye on them.
1. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/how-we-will-help/templates-and-g...
But US wage law very rarely makes any exceptions for apprentices like this, so it's rarely worthwhile to bring them on unless they already have some training.
Unfortunately, much of the legislative consensus in the US is that minimum wages do not have any effect on employment levels, even of the young and inexperienced. Many municipalities and states are in the process of raising their minimum wages (for all ages) to $20 AUD.
I don't think that's true; if wage and hour laws apply, you must pay minimum wage ($0 is not an option). If the relationship isn't covered by wage and hour laws, you can pay them negative amounts (charge for training), $0, or pay a positive amount above or below the minimum wage (though in the latter case it will have to be framed as something other than pay for work, such as a stipend of some kind.)
The main rules are here, for unpaid internships: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf
So unpaid ($0) internships are permitted for certain restricted circumstances. But if you fall outside this category, you jump right up to 'employee', and have to be paid the minimum wage. Basically, once you start paying, you have to pay all the way. (Now, there is a subminimum scale of 75% of the minimum wage, but it's only available for high school enrolees above 16 years of age, for vocational training, and is granted at the discretion of the Department of Labor: https://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/q-a.htm)
Not to mention that one still needs to pay bills and live while in the apprenticeship, and minimum wage already doesn't cover that. So you'd be in a situation where only those who already have money would be able to afford to do it, much like unpaid internships. This leaves lower income people worse off than they were.
A job that does not confer many added skills or valuable experience may therefore be available for that wage, but one where much of the compensation is training may not be available at that wage price.
It's not a case of "apprentices making more money" vs. "apprentices making less money". It's a case of "apprentices making less money" vs. "apprentices not hired at all."
Extra incentive.
Most apprenticeships allow the apprentice to do lower tier work and work their way up which still allows for the apprentice to produce value. Combine this with a lower pay and there's no loss to the company if done right.
It works like that in the tech industry all the time starting at desktop support or even office clerk and working their way up.
The problem is...no one is willing to be a mentor or train anymore for whatever reason.
Paul Sellers, who is a craftsman for fifty years already, disagrees that it's plenty of time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O0Q9wJPkBw (the question starts at 12:55, and two important and relevant points are at 16:10 and at 18:00).
To sum up, an apprentice not only underperforms initially, but also lowers their master's effectiveness. It takes quite long time for an apprentice to pick up enough trade to be of any use without dragging down the master, and this is as true for woodwork as for programming or systems/networks administration. It's only fair that the apprentice serves somewhat longer than it takes to just learn the craft.
Though I agree that for IT apprenticeship is probably the most sensible way to train staff.
The author is Gail Heriot, an academic lawyer who is also on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, appointed by Congress. Strange.
"It is entirely clear that 21st century Americans have no interest in jailing runaway apprentices. A legislative proposal calling for the arrest and detention of individuals in breach of their apprenticeship contracts would rightly be met with jeers and guffaws."
The big reason they don't like the German approach is because it excludes from the trades those who don't have the "appropriate" licenses. This shuts those of little means out of these jobs. They proposed, as possible solutions, vouchers, loans, and possibly permitting non-compete agreements.
Your accusation of "re-introducing slavery, or at least indentured servitude", is deeply dishonest.
That's effectively indentured servitude.
The big difference between union-run apprenticeships and employer-run apprenticeships is that the union represents the employee's interest, not the employer. This results in a much more formal educational arrangement. It's not just "cheap workers with a little training now and then".[1]
[1] http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/article...
Sure, the union-run apprenticeship represents the employee's interest - but only by excluding others from that position. If the only way you can get a license into a trade is to complete a union apprenticeship, then the union is effectively shutting out people from that trade. That's the complaint; not that it's bad for the apprentice, but rather that it's bad for those not permitted to be apprentices.
Student loans aren't indentured servitude because they're not tied to a specific employer. H1-B visas are so tied, but there's the option to quit and go back to one's own country. But the Cato Institute proposal describes being "bound by a contract to work for a particular employer for a fixed period of time" enforced by a debt obligation. That's indentured servitude. Probably illegal in the US.
A system where you take on a debt, and are jailed if you renege it, is very different than a system where you take on a debt, and can discharge it in bankruptcy. That's the crucial difference, and I think the text makes it clear that Cato are not advocating the former.
And I don't see how employment/training is so different from anything else for which you might take out a forfeitable loan. If you're saying that all debts payable to a single creditor are "indenture", then so are mortgages and car loans. The "servitude" part would come about solely as a consequence of it being a loan based on work, rather than anything else.
This could be combined with something like a below minimum-wage for apprenticeships, with the reasoning that an apprentice is being paid in both money and in training they would otherwise have to pay for themselves.
In other words, either jobs become dumber, or jobs become obsolete.
I don't know what can be done about either of those forces. This isn't about college, it isn't about some lost art, it isn't about microeconomic market forces. It's about craftsmanship becoming much more rare.
Most sysadmins in Germany that I know (some of them the best I ever met) did an apprenticeship.
My wife's grandfather has a stunning 19th century grandfather clock. It's made of beautifully carved wood, handmade gears, gorgeous engraving and inlays, the obvious result of hundreds of hours of highly skilled labor. It's huge,and it's not very accurate. Moreover, the fine craftsmanship is nowhere near as precise as a cheap kid's watch today. At this moment, I have three different clocks within reach of my hand. They're all synced to millisecond accuracy against an official atomic clock. They all cost pennies at most, and cannot be made by human hands. There is no point in grandfather clocks today, except as family heirlooms or decoration.
That's what I'm talking about. Jobs like clock-making have been obliterated. Whole industries. Most "jobs" today are either white-collar brain work, or mere cogs in a wheel developed by someone else.
Many jobs require "two years" of experience, which makes getting a first job a difficult catch 22.
As a non-profit you could reasonably hire and employ these folks to do productive business at below-market rates and be more or less unconcerned with them leaving once they finished.
Anecdotally, I know quite a few people with good skills who are stuck working retail/service jobs, chronically underemployed, because they simply can't get into a position to demonstrate excellence and get the experience to get a job in their trained field. I consider that a waste of human potential, and quite sad.
How is it that they are skilled enough to be useful at one employer but not the other?
Many small cities do not have police academies. They just hire the graduates from other cities. This is similar to the problem of apprentices leaving.