The Apprentice Will Rebuild America’s Middle Class

Yes, this is a play on the president’s once-successful television show, but it is really about something more important: the country’s growing recognition that college for everyone is a failed idea. Apart from the unconscionable expense involved and the failure of higher education to prepare its graduates for the jobs market, this recognition also reflects a clear fact of life: not everyone wants or needs what college has to offer. Many of those who have gone four years or more and saddled themselves unproductively with huge debts would have been better off learning a trade. So also would American business, for the economy’s most acute need these days is less for new BAs than for trained technicians, what employment economists refer to as the “semi-skilled” or “middle-skilled” worker.   

In responding to this individual and economic need, the United States could learn a lot from Germany. That country in particular, but also Switzerland and Austria, never stressed universal college for its population. Instead, these nations have established apprenticeship programs, where young people acquire the skills to pursue useful and rewarding careers that pay what Americans would describe as a middle-class wage. These programs combine vocational courses at school with on-the-job training at participating firms, usually with a job offer at the conclusion. Now that many in this country have begun to take to heart the advantages of these apprentice programs, German firms with operations on this side of the Atlantic have take the lead in developing them.

This new American drive has three roots: First is the otherwise disappointing realization that college degree programs are expensive and simply cannot meet all the needs of either the modern economy or the thousands of the young people involved. Nothing so much captures this fact than the well-documented and sad existence of millions of young graduates with huge debts and an inability to use their degrees to earn enough to meet their obligations. Second is the desperation in regions of this country that have lost industry and jobs to offshoring, particularly textiles in the southeast and heavy manufacturing in the mid-west. Third is the pressing need for skilled technicians in today’s computer- and AI-driven industry, whether under the headings of construction or manufacturing, transportation and even medicine.

This third factor in the equation is crystal clear in figures available from industry groups. It is widely known that industry has less and less use for the unskilled millions who once manned assembly lines and comparable tasks outside of manufacturing. Most of these jobs have been lost to robots or gone offshore to less-developed and lower-wage countries. Instead, industry today, whether it builds highways or manufactures cars or produces medical supplies, needs highly skilled technicians, not quite engineers but people of middle skill levels. Siemens, the huge German conglomerate with a significant presence in the States, estimates that half of all its job openings in 2022 will be at this level. Already, American industry faces constraints because of a shortage of just these sorts of people. As early as 2011, such positions went wanting despite the fact that the lingering effects of the great recession had left some 14 million Americans jobless. The Manufacturing Institute estimates that eight out of ten American manufacturers have difficulty finding people with this sort of training. A 2018 industry survey estimated that some 2 million of these sorts of positions were left unfilled. College cannot meet this need. 

The United States did not always neglect technical training. Even when shortages of these sorts of workers were much less acute than the are today, Congress in 1937 passed the National Apprenticeship Act to set standards for training. The enthusiasm for technical training waned with the GI Bill passed after World War II to encourage veterans to go to college and pursue professional degrees. It worked well then. The growing economy needed more people with higher education. But the endless expansion of college since has produced a surplus of such people, while the proliferation of majors has created uncertainties about the practical applicability of their credentials. At the same time, the neglect of technical training has produced today’s shortages of middle-skill workers. In contrast to the American experience, Germany responded in 1969 to pressure from industry and trade unions to pass the Vocational Training Act that combines high school courses with industry apprenticeships to give young people the technical skills applicable in hundreds of different occupations. Today, some two-thirds of German 18-year olds go through such programs. 

Though presently American apprenticeship programs involve barely 0.2% of all workers, the tide is turning. German firms like Siemens, as it strives to find the technicians it needs, has found a welcome reception for apprenticeship ideas especially in depressed regions of the country. North Carolina, which lost so much textile and furniture making in past decades, has partnered with European firms to establish what it calls “Apprenticeship 2000,” a program that combines on-the-job training with vocational courses in high school and community college. South Carolina has gone down a similar road. Colorado has made like arrangements with its “CareerWise” program, while in Utah educational authorities partnered with the Swiss company, Stadler Rail, to set up a similar program in Salt Lake City. New Hampshire has set up Apprentice NH along similar lines, as has Elkhart, Indiana with its Careerwise Elkhart County. Washington, always slow in the draw, has at last entered the effort through the Trump administration’s 2018 establishment of the National Council of the American Worker, which has made millions in grants to encourage these sorts of programs across the country. Its goal is to create 1 million new apprenticeships.  

For a more complete discussion of this matter, see the article “You’re Hired” by Steven Malanga in the summer edition of City Journal here. To be sure these programs are no panacea. They do, however, provide an answer to a pressing economic need and should benefit many young people as well. They also promise to help rebuild this country’s almost lost middle class.