May 15, 2024 • 52 mins
Apprenticeships aren’t just for blacksmiths! The notion that an individual could earn a living, while simultaneously learning how to do their job is such a foreign concept. That’s certainly not how we do things here in America where more folks believe that it takes money to make money! In recent decades more individuals have subscribed to the idea that you have to go to the most expensive college, take on a boatload of student loans, and saddle yourself with years of debt if you want a decent job that pays. Some of the most selective universities are quickly approaching the $100,000 mark… for a single year of college. Nothing has risen faster than the price of college over the decades. But, what if there was another way? We’re joined by education and workforce expert Ryan Craig who says that there are alternatives. His book, Apprentice Nation explores how a modern apprenticeship system will allow students and job seekers to jump-start their careers by learning while they earn, leading to greater workforce diversity and geographic mobility. Hear why other countries are beating us at the apprenticeship game, the types of industries that would greatly benefit from apprenticeships, why college and apprenticeships aren’t mutually exclusive, where you can go to find the best learn and earn programs today, and much more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today we're talking about apprenticeships, how to earn and learn
simultaneously with Ryan Craig.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, so the notion that an individual could earn a
living while simultaneously learning how to do their job is
such a foreign concept, you know, Like, that is not
how we do things here in America. It takes money
to make money, baby, That's how we do it here.
You've got to go to the most expensive college. You
got to take on boat loads of student loans, saddle
(00:48):
yourself with years of debt if you want a decent job.
These days, some of the most man selective universities, they're
quickly approaching the one hundred thousand dollar mark for a
single year of college. And while we are fans of
investing in yourself, like, it just definitely looks like we're
approaching a tipping point. Nothing literally has risen faster than
the price of college over the decades. But what if
(01:11):
there was another way? And we're joined by education and
workforce expert Ryan Craig, who says that there are alternatives.
His book Apprentice Nation explores how a modern apprenticeship system,
how that will allow students and job seekers to jumpstart
their careers by learning while they earn, leading to greater
(01:32):
workforce diversity and geographical mobility. So Ryan, thank you for
joining us today on the podcast to talk about this.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Great to be here. Matt in Jill appreciate it. And
you know, to your point about one hundred thousand dollars college.
The New York Times just wrote a piece a couple
of weeks ago calculating that Vanderbilt University is the first
where if you add the room board and fees to tuition,
and then you add in the cost of a couple
flights a year to and from school, you're over one
(01:58):
hundred grand built.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
There, you go.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Sounds cheap to me, Ryan On, I mean, what's the
big fuss come on a bit of money?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Is it grows on trees?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I just pick it out in my backyard. The first
question we ask everybody who comes on the show, by
the way, Ryan, is what their craft beer equivalent is.
Matt and I spend more money than some people think
it's sane on craft beer. But we're day, we're doing
the right stuff at the same time, saving and investing
for a future. So what's that for you, what's your
kind of equivalent splurge.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, I'm afraid it's not as going to be as
interesting as craft beer. I'm a runner, and I don't
have that much time between my work and my my
writing and my policy nonprofit work. So I like to
when i'm running be able to catch up on TV
shows that I've missed. And so even though I live
(02:46):
in LA I run in my basement on a treadmill,
and I have the top of the line treadmill.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
That I have splurged.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
So most people will have like a consumer couple of
thousand dollars maybe treadmill mind costs a lot more than that,
but I use it and I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So okay, so you're running in you're catching up on entertainment.
Does it have some sort of like twelve inch screen,
like this beautiful display that's automatically.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Desc beautiful screen. Yeah, big beautiful screen right in front
of it. Surround sound, it's great.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Oh treadmill? What's the round sound? Baby? Okay, So what's
the deal by Dolby? You know, I see these treadmills
that are curved? Is yours like that?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
What are those treadmills?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
All? It's not I don't understand that either. That looks looks.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Painful, Okay, you and me both. I don't know what
those what those are for, but let's dive into it.
You wrote a book about faster, cheaper alternatives to college
before your current book about apprenticeships. But there is obviously
a clear thread between the two. Why is this area,
why is this domain so important to you?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Well, I mean I've made my career in higher education.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
My first job twenty five years ago was at Columbia University,
which has had.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
A difficult, difficult month. I don't say.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
They've been in the news.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Since then, I have helped build universities, worked at universities,
worked with universities, build companies that partner with universities, and
have a love for higher education. The challenge that we have,
of course, is that we're facing a three part crisis
in higher education, and that has nothing to do with
(04:25):
the protests. The first is a crisis of completion. So
only about half of students who matriculate into a college
or university actually complete the programm or degree that they
set out to complete. So that's a problem. We have
the highest rate of matriculation among developed countries, so we
(04:46):
have great access, but we have the lowest rate of completion,
and some community colleges it can be as low as
fifteen percent. Then we have a crisis of affordability. So
the one hundred thousand dollars degree is one hundred thousand
dollars a year degree is nigh. But you know, beyond that,
the average student who takes on student loans, which is
(05:08):
about seventy percent of all students, if they complete and graduate,
they're graduating now with about fifty thousand dollars in student
loan debt. And no other country has that kind of issue,
settling its young people with that much debt as they're
trying to launch their careers. And then third is employability.
(05:28):
You know, if every student graduated into a sixty thousand
dollars a year job, they'd be able to support that
kind of student loan debt. But Strata just put out
a new study last month showing that fifty two percent
of recent grads are underemployed in their first jobs, which
means that they probably could have gotten those jobs without
(05:50):
the investment of time and money in those degrees. And
we know that if you're underemployed in your first job.
Two thirds of the time you're underemployed for five years later.
Half the time you're under employed a decade later. Right,
careers are path dependent, and so something is not working.
And I think that the fundamental change is that the
(06:12):
economy has been transformed. Digital transformation has changed the economy,
changed the jobs we all do. We're all using technology
in our jobs. Many of us are actually working in.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
The tech sector.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
But if you look at the programs of study, if
you go and you go back to your alma mater
and you look around, it looks almost identical to the
way you know. Yes, maybe students have phones, and maybe
there's a data science program, but by and large, same program,
same departmental structure as when you attended.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
And something is not working.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And what's not working is that employers are having an
increasingly hard time finding the skills that they're looking for.
They're looking for discrete combinations of digital skills, business skills, knowledge,
role knowledge, and colleges and universities, I think are doing
as good a job as they've ever done on the
sort of core cognitive skills, critical thinking, problem solving, communication skills,
(07:10):
but they're not doing anything around the specific skills that
employees are looking for in addition, and that's contributing to
the underemployment. And those skills are actually harder to learn
in a classroom than they are by doing so that's
maybe the bridge to sort of earning and learning.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Is part of the problem that the workplace is the
nail and college has been seen as the hammer. It's
like we've essentially made it a one size fits all solution,
even though in actuality it's not working out that way,
and we've pushed everybody in that direction. And yet, like
in your last book that you released in twenty eighteen,
you talk about other solutions that are superior to the
(07:51):
current for your meth that's even before we get into
like in depth talk about apprenticeships, Like what are some
of those other routes that are superior that we're just
like neglecting completely.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, look, I mean, you know, we coined the term
fast last mile training to reflect sort of what employers
are looking for, these digital skills, business skills, business knowledge
that colleges aren't aren't providing. And there's a whole industry
now of alternative boot camps and online credentials and industry
(08:22):
recognized certificate programs that may take you as little as
a few months, and you have a credential that an
employer will value and hire you on without regard to
whether you have a degree in many cases, So the challenge,
and as you're right, my last book was sort of
a guided tour of that emerging last mile training landscape,
(08:46):
which is the direct result of those three crises that
we're seeing in higher education, particularly around employability. But those,
you know, those programs are still what I would call
train and prey programs, which is to say, there's no
guarantee of a job right you graduate from you know,
the most well intentioned coding boot camp. You know, employer
(09:08):
is not going to know what that program is, necessarily
what skills you've gained, and it's certainly not going to
close what is emerging as perhaps the biggest problem facing
new grads, which is this experience gap where employers are
increasingly explicitly or implicitly demanding six, twelve, eighteen, twenty four
(09:28):
months of real, relevant, paid, sometimes even full time work
experience and jobs that used to be entry level jobs.
And AI is going to completely turn that experience gap
into a chasm because the bargain that employers have always
made with their entry level workers is you don't need
(09:49):
skills or experience, you just need kind of you know,
the potential and the interest. You'll, yeah, exactly, and you'll
do you know, kind of some grunt work menial work
while you learn the ropes and become productive well with AI.
That grunt work and media work is going to go away.
You know, no investment banking analyst is going to be
spending you know, fifty hours a week building PowerPoint.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Slides for decks.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
They're going to be due to spending an hour on
that using AI, and they'll be expected to spend the
other forty nine hours doing higher value client work, product work,
you name it. But the problem is that that higher
value work is not going to be possible without experience.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
And so you're going to.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
See employers demanding years of work experience for jobs that
used to be entry level jobs. And it's really going
to pull the ladder up and away from young Americans
who've gone down this tuition, tuition based, debt based career
launch pathway, which is really unfortunate because among all developed countries,
(10:51):
we're first on tuition based, debt based career launch infrastructure.
We're last on earn and learn infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And that's the problem with those sort of those smile
training boot camps or online certifications. It seems like what
you're saying too, is that the employers they don't necessarily
trust that because they've got no idea, they don't have
a whole lot of experience. They're as opposed to if
they were on site, if they had the ability to
learn firsthand what it is that they needed to do.
And that kind of leads us to apprenticeships. And this
(11:19):
might be kind of a weird question, but like, how
do you define an apprenticeship, right, because I think you've
said that it's not workforce training, like you are actually
earning some money. So can you kind of drill down
on that and explain to listeners kind of what that
apprenticeship can look like.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, an apprenticeship quite simply is a full time job
that has a couple of distinct characteristics. One is that
you're not expected to have the skills or experience coming in.
Two is that you're being provided with formal and informal
training as part of that part of that job. So
the formal training is actually you're going to be in
(11:55):
a classroom for the equivalent of kind of a day,
a week or perhaps as long as a year or
sometimes two years, and you're actually learning everything you need
to know about the job. And then there's an informal
on the job training component to it, where your supervisors,
your managers who you're working for, are supposed to sort
of continue to train you on the on the job.
(12:19):
And then after a period of time one year, two years,
three years, you're just going to transition to become a
regular employee. You don't have to apply for a new job.
You just sort of continue. You're no longer an apprentice.
You're you know, a regular, a regular employee. So that's apprenticeship,
if you know, there's confusion around it because there are
other terms like pre apprenticeship, youth apprenticeship, those are those
(12:40):
are if you're not a full time employee, you're not
an apprentice, period end of story.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Because internships, some people confuse internships and apprenticeship sometimes too right,
it's it's like potential onboarding, but you're also not a
full time employee. You're yeah, cut leg go at any
time after the well, yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
An internship.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Internship is like apprenticeship turned on its head because you're
an apprentice is a full time worker who's doing training
as part of his or her job. An intern is
someone who's engaged enrolled in an educational typically post secondary
program college program where during the program, whether it's over
(13:20):
the summer or during during a term, they're engaging and
usually part time, sometimes full time work over the summer,
sometimes paid too often unpaid, which makes it kind of inequitable.
But you return then from it's time limited and then
you return to you know, finishing your program of study,
(13:40):
so you know, a thumbnail apprenticeship. Apprentices are workers who
have training built in in terms or students who are
doing a sort of temporary work experience.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
So tell me what's the benefit for the employer, because
I'm thinking about this from the perspective of somebody who
employees people, spends money for hopefully productive labor. And you
hire somebody and not only are you paying them a
salary you know, probably not commensurate to the people obviously
that have been around for five ten years or something
like that and are highly productive. But I'm having to
pay the salary of someone and teach them at the
(14:14):
same time. That requires like a commitment, dedication. What sort
of commitment are they getting in return? So what are
the stakes like for these employers who participate in apprenticeship programs.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Well, depending on how you define it, too high or
too low, meaning that you know your average employer is
not going to do it.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And that's kind of the secret of apprenticeship is that
where apprenticeships thrive around the world, whether it be in
you know, Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, or here in the
US in the building trades. They're not thriving because employers
in those countries or sectors are more benevolent or more
far sighted. They're thriving because there are intermediaries who are
(15:00):
doing the work of setting up and running these programs.
And these intermediaries are doing so because they're either required
to do so by law or they're incentivized to do
so by the government. And so in Germany, the reason
that you know, the German apprenticeship program is a system
is the kind of the gold standard is that you
have these massive, powerful chambers of commerce across every industry
(15:25):
that are required by law to work with unions and
run these programs for the benefit of employers, and they're
funded to do so you know, I kind of laugh
every time I see some report of a state junket
going over to Germany to drink the reaseling and eat
the schnitzel and look at their apprenticeship programs. It's not opposite.
We don't have that infrastructure. We can't, we can't, we
(15:48):
can't do that. But what's interesting is that the UK
and Australia and France thirty years ago looked a lot
like the US in terms of having a very small
apprenticeship system, like almost all in the building trades, like
we do today. And today in those countries there are
(16:08):
eight to ten x where we are in terms of
apprentices as a percentage of the workforce. And it's very
common in those countries to launch careers in finance, tech,
healthcare as an apprentice. And how did that happen. It's
because governments recognize that employers don't do it themselves. Certainly,
colleges and universities don't set up and run these programs
(16:30):
for the benefit of employers. It requires a concerted effort
to incentivize and establish a robust ecosystem of intermediaries who
are doing this work of setting up and running programs
for the benefit of employers. And so now in the
UK you have this ecosystem of twelve hundred apprenticeship service providers.
These are nonprofit organizations and more often former staffing companies
(16:55):
HR services companies that have launched businesses as apprenticeship service
providers because there's government funding and incentive to do so,
and so they're now running around the country knocking on
doors of every employer offering to set up and run
apprenticeship programs across every sector.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
So you won't find a.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Larger mid sized employer in the UK that hasn't been
approached by a half dozen of these apprenticeship service providers.
It's the opposite here. You know, you won't find any
employer who's been approached by any you know company or
organization offering to set up and help them run an
apprenticeship program. If you know, the idea occurs to you know,
(17:33):
an HR leader or a CEO at an American company,
the assumption is, well, we'd have to do it ourselves,
and for exactly the reasons you stated. The math doesn't
work because you're you're not only paying for the training,
but you're paying and you're hiring and paying an unproductive
worker a worker who's not going to be productive for
an extended period of time, So it doesn't work without
(17:55):
smart policy.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Help help us get get an understanding of I guess
what apprenticeships can because you mentioned some of the different
building trades in Europe. But you also point out though
in your book, that apprenticeships they're not just for blue
collar jobs as well, right, Like, can you talk about
I guess the vast variety of what apprenticeships and what
different industries that you can find those types of opportunities in.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, I mean, apprenticeships are you know, sort of informal
apprenticeships exist everywhere, right, and you know, think about investment,
banking or consulting. You know there's sort of those top
firms or hiring candidates in with potential but without the
skills or experience, and they're they're delivering that to them.
Think about Hollywood and the classic you know, going to
(18:39):
work in the CIA mail room for example. That's you know,
kind of an informal apprenticeship apprenticeship model. But broadly speaking,
apprenticeships work in the trades because they're really good ways
to learn how to use tools, right, And they work
well in the trades because even though you may not
(19:01):
know what you're doing on day one, you can still
kind of hold the tools and you know, help right,
even if you don't know what you're what you're doing.
With the digitization of the economy, everyone needs to know
how to use tools. Now, those may not be tools
that you know require you know, muscle and dexterity. They
may be tools that require understanding how to use certain
(19:23):
software platforms. And that's where we're seeing huge growth in
apprenticeship programs and apprenticeship models in areas like software development,
data analytics, healthcare I, cybersecurity, discrete tech ecosystems like Salesforce, workday, SAP.
(19:45):
You know, these are all areas where you know, higher
education is not you know, preparing and delivering work ready
graduates and apprenticeships are really useful for you know, there's
seven hundred thousand unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the country right now,
(20:06):
and the experience gap in cybersecurity has just exploded over
the last five years. It used to be that a
college grad with some technical acumen could access a job
as a Tier one analyst and a security operations center.
But today, because of automation, tier one analysts have basically
gone away, and the entry level position is what used
(20:28):
to be a Tier two analyst, which demands a CISSP certification,
which is three to five years work experience. So how
do you break into cyber. Well, we need apprenticeship infrastructure
in that space. We need incentives for companies and more
likely intermediaries to hire you know, tens or hundreds of
thousands of young Americans, deliver them the skills are experience,
(20:52):
and kind of serve them up on a silver platter
to the ultimate employers who'll be glad to take them
and put them into those now level you know, tier
two positions.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, it also seems like a just a more optimized,
efficient approach, hopefully allowing a lot of individuals to forsake
some of the diletorious effects of having significant amounts of
student loan debt, especially with the stat you cited something
like forty percent of which those people who even get
the degree find themselves underemployed, not using that degree. So
(21:26):
it's a really really expensive item that you hang on
the wall that's not really paying off in the way
that you hoped.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Ryan, we've got more than we want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
We specifically want to talk about the college verse apprenticeship,
and like are these mutually exclusive? Get to some questions
with you on that. Right after this, we are back.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
For the break, still talking with Ryan Craig about apprenticeships,
and right, like, can you basically just share with us
like an elevator pitch for an apprenticeship versus going to college,
because yeah, I think there are a lot of folks
who might be you know, they're kind of they're hearing
you extol the benefits and how that could get you
placed in a position where you're going to earn a
(22:11):
lot of money while simultaneously not incurring a whole lot
of student loans. But yeah, help somebody to do a
paradigm shift're used to it. Yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah,
so somebody who might be grappling with us, I would
love to hear the elevator pitch for the apprenticeship.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
The elevator pitch is that obviously college for all isn't
working for all right now, given the affordability and employability
challenges that we're seeing, an apprenticeship model or an earn
a learned model is a more equitable model right where
we're not asking students to take a financial risk we're
not asking to take an employment risk because you're hired
(22:45):
and you're being paid from day one. You're being delivered
the skills and experience that you're going to need to
at least start to launch your career now. It doesn't
an apprenticeship is not necessarily exclusive from a college model.
You can do an apprenticeship and then perhaps return and
earn a degree or some kind of certificate or post
(23:07):
secondary credential. But I think that a model where we
have as many apprentice jobs as we have places in
freshman classes around the country so we can give high
school graduates a real choice. Do you want to invest
now in tuition and student loans, or do you want
(23:29):
to take a less risky pathway, earn and learn for
a few years, develop a better sense of what your
interests are, what your capabilities are, and then perhaps either
continue to work or return and be a more informed
consumer of post secondary education. I mean, think about it.
Other than buying a house. It's probably the most significant
(23:51):
investment that most people make in their lives, and most
young people are doing it at the age of eighteen
nineteen twenty with very little information about what their interests are,
what their capabilities are, and specifically how effective the schools
are and programs that they're planning to or considering it.
Those schools are to help them achieve the achieve their.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Goals, and those schools aren't really held to a standard
of being forced to tell incoming students about what they
are likely to learn. Hey, here are the stat like.
You can find some of those things, but they're opaque,
they're hard to find, They're hard to figure out, especially
when you're a seventeen year old. Eighteen year old applying
to a bunch of different schools, you're not equipped to
figure out the ROI of that college degree. I will say, though,
(24:37):
you made it sound like apprenticeships are a superior choice
for a whole lot of people. I'm curious to hear
you take because I'm sure you get flogged with the
statistic every time you're interviewed about the fact that college
grads make a million dollars more over their earning lifetime
than the typical high school graduate. Why, in your opinion,
is that misleading when we're kind of including apprenticeships in
(24:58):
the conversation.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I love this.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
In a year's long debate with the progenitors of that
status to the Georgetown Center of Education and Workforce. A
couple of problems with that. One is those are aggregate numbers.
Those numbers come from graduates who may have graduated twenty thirty,
forty years ago, sort of prior to digital transformation. So
(25:22):
it's not reflective of what's happened to grads in the
last five or ten years, or what's going to happen
to this year's class or students who are matriculating in
college for this year.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
So that's one thing.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
The bigger problem is that there's a huge self selection problem.
So we know for a fact that people who young
people who successfully run the gamut and a complete college
overcoming all of these challenges come from wealthier, more stable,
(26:01):
and frankly whider backgrounds than the typical the typical American
and those those characteristics are also characteristic of people who
are going to earn more without regard to what educational
program they pursue or if they even pursue one. And
obviously they you know, not only that, but they they've
(26:23):
demonstrated these are people who you know, have the clearly
have the capability to persist, you know, on a difficult
pathway four year pathway, life hasn't gotten in the way
they've completed college. Those are also characteristics of people who
are going to make more money. So I have never
seen a study that is somehow correcting for that self
(26:45):
selection bias. And I suspect that I do think there
is a college premium. I don't think it's a million dollars.
I think it may be a couple hundred thousand dollars.
And I think I think it's shrinking.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So you might say we're comparing apples to cabbage or
something like that, right, Yeah, No, I.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Think that's I think that's right. I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I think that you know the idea, and of course
you know the what what whatever? The number is a
couple you know, maybe it's half of half a million.
That is, you know, kind of a rounding error relative
to the differences between majors that we see. So if
you're going to major in engineering or computer science, uh,
(27:21):
and you and I and you tell me that you're
going to complete that program, I don't care where you go.
If you know that you're going to complete a program
in those areas, you're almost always better off doing that
than even perhaps an apprenticeship program that's a good investment.
But if you but if you tell me that, maybe
you even want to do that, but you're going to
(27:42):
be crowded out because you know, the public colleges and
universities that the vast majority of Americans attend, they have
limited enrollment in those programs, and most most students who
want to major in those areas are actually shunted off
into less remunerative programs in majors. So if you tell
(28:04):
me that you're going to major in psychology or sociology
or unfortunately in the humanities, I'm very skeptical that there's
any college premium right now, and you're probably better off
pursuing some kind of earn and learned pathway, becoming a
more informed consumer of post secondary education, and likely achieving
(28:26):
a higher return on investment.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, and I feel like a part of that one
million more over your lifetime problem as well is the
fact that, like, of course, this is sort of like
you said, it's it's aggregated, Like the data is based
on previous years worth of data, and over the decades
you see more and more students, more and more graduates
from college, and so like if you just look at
the simple supply and demand. If you look at simple economics,
(28:50):
are there's more supply of grads, and so that premium
is going to in my mind, it's only going to
continue to decrease, you know, with the additional potential process
supply of plumbers and then they're getting exactly Yeah, I
don't think that we're saying that like that's what everyone
should do, but like, of course you've got to take
the financial considerations into account. But so going back a
little bit, like you mentioned other countries like Germany, right,
(29:10):
there are systems in place, so there is an infrastructure.
What are the gears behind successful apprenticeship program? Like, what
does it take in order for something like this to
get off the ground.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
So I mean it starts with employers, right, There is
no apprenticeship program unless you have an employer willing to
hire an apprentice. Now, the problem is, as I said,
employers need help in order to say yes to apprenticeship
and yes to hiring apprentices. And that's what we've seen
in other countries as well. So the question is how
do we create this robust ecosystem of intermediaries apprenticeship service
(29:43):
providers who can actively sell apprenticeship and apprentice jobs to
employers and in many cases kind of provide a turnkey
solution so that all the employers doing is saying yes
to a trained new employee and paying the intermediary for
(30:03):
that resource. That's actually what my day job is. My
firm is Achieved Partners. We're the leading private equity firm
in workforce and we build apprenticeship infrastructure. We buy business
services companies and sectors where there's a talent gap and
we transform them into apprenticeship service providers and talent engines
(30:25):
for these talent starved talent starve sectors. But to do
it broadly, to do it at the level of the
UK or Australia or France, we need to invest. And
today we spend over five hundred billion dollars taxpayer money
federal and state on accredited colleges and universities. We spend
(30:46):
less than three hundred millions, so less than one one
thousandth that that amount on earn and learn pathways. Other
countries on a per capita basis are spending you know,
almost two orders of magnitude more on earn and learn pathways,
So that's a huge Like the UK is it about
(31:07):
forty billion on a per capita basis a relative to
our three hundred three hundred million, so it's a and
of course that money is making it much easier for
an attractive for intermediaries to enter the market, build this
infrastructure that we're missing and begin running around to employers
(31:30):
offering to set up and doing the work of actually
running apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship programs are not easy to run.
There's about ten different things that need to happen that
an employer is not doing today, and most of the
most important and hardest of which, again is employing and
paying an unproductive worker for a period of time. So
the best the best scenario for the employer, as I say,
(31:50):
is what if you have an.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Intermediary that's offering.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
To do all that and actually employ and be the
employer of record of that apprentice until they become productive.
And those are the kinds of models that we're seeing
grow rapidly in the US, but only in sectors where
the demand is just so the gap is just so
large that clients are willing to pay for it. We
need investment so those earn and learned pathways can flourish
(32:19):
across the economy.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Ryan I could hear some of the limited government types saying,
hold on, wait a second, you want to use tax
dollars to pay for some of these apprenticeship programs. Look
at the national debt, look at the deficit. We can't
afford something like this. What would your response be to that?
And I mean, can you help us understand how much
money is being spent in the higher education system in
(32:41):
general at the federal levels. I don't know, maybe maybe
these are funds that are better spent.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, well that's exactly it.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
So five hundred billion federal and state taxpayer dollars on
colleges and universities, three hundred million today on earn and learn.
If you compare a college student with an apprentice, and
you ask how much public support are they wedding? For
every dollar of public support that an apprentice receives, college
students getting fifty bucks.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
So I don't know whether the right ratio is one
to one or two to one or ten to one,
but I'm pretty sure it's not fifty.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
To one or a thousand.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah. Yeah, So we I mean, you know, all we're
saying is we need a more balanced approach. And there
are states like California that have gone ahead and begun
investing in that infrastructure before even before you beginning to
rebalance away from traditional colleges and university. So, California last
year launched one hundred and s twenty five million dollar
(33:36):
initiative to help build this earn and learn infrastructure and
it's working. Apprenticeships are growing twenty thirty percent a year
in California right now.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, there's some good news out there. There are states
who are creating this infrastructure, and like there are also businesses.
I mean, so even though we've got a long ways
to go, there are some opportunities out there. Can you
highlight some of the most interesting apprenticeship opportunities that are
currently in existence in the US?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, I mean we're seeing this higher trained deploy model,
which is truly these sort of turnkey apprenticeship programs where
business services companies are adding this as a new element
of their value proposition there. You know, for example, we
have a company that is a Salesforce solutions business and
(34:26):
they launched the first registered apprenticeship program for Salesforce and
now they're able to deliver Salesforce talent to their clients
in addition to Salesforce solutions. And it's made a world
of difference for for the company and for their clients.
And so we see talent as a you know, really
exciting new you know, for every problem comes up an opportunity.
(34:50):
We have a we have a talent problem, we have
a problem with a sort of unbalanced education workforce system.
But that that can that can create opportunities for companies
in sectors where there is a talent gap. And that's
exactly what our firm, Achieved Partners does, is we partner
with founders and we help build these new apprenticeship models
(35:14):
and sectors like cybersecurity, workday SAP, supply chain, even some
healthcare sectors as well.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Okay, how would a resurgence of apprenticeship programs change the
way the high school's done? Because typically the put at
least the high school I went to, it was college
track all the way, baby, And if you weren't the
kind of person who was going to go get a
four year degree, I think you were left to your
own devices, like you didn't really know what to do
because everybody was supposed to be on this four year
(35:44):
college track. How would more apprenticeship programs impact high schools?
And kind of maybe some of the incentives or some
of the ways, especially that high school seniors are led
to think about their future.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
So, yeah, i'd say forty fifty years.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Ago, that wasn't the case in high schools had you
had two tracks. You had a college track, and you
had a career in technical education or vocational track as well. Today,
thanks to decades of college for all, there is only
one track. And you know it's it's demonstrated no better
than the fact that, especially now without required standardized testing,
(36:23):
the only quantitative metric that colleges can evaluate as your
GPA and AP and honors classes, which is sort of
the pathway to selective colleges, are weighted on a five
point scale, whereas every other class is on a four
point scale. So you decide to take a CTE class
(36:45):
in high school, some sort of vocational class, you're penalizing.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
You're screwing yourself over basically.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, exactly exactly, And so ct has withered on the
vine as a result. But if you can imagine a
world where we have as many apprentice jobs as there
are places, and there are apprentice programs across the economy,
then there truly is a destination for high school grads.
Other than college. And I think that's the key to
(37:13):
rejuvenating CTE at high school, at the high school level,
and that's really exciting, and that's actually an issue as well.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
I mean, you want one.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
I don't know if you're familiar with the work of
Richard Reeves, who's talked about the particular challenges that our
education system is having for young for boys and young
young men, and how they're underachieving, and how there are
some colleges now that are you know, almost two thirds.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Female young women thriving in the higher education system as
it's currently constructed, young men less.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
So yeah, at every level though, I mean met young
you know both boys at every level, boys are behind
the system is not set up for them. You know,
there needs to be a more an option for boys
and young men that's more immediately engaging for them where
they can see the result in the rationale for attending
(38:07):
and engaging and doing work and succeeding in their in
their programs. And CTE is clearly clearly has TOULD should
play a part in that. But again, you can't rejuvenate
ct unless there's a destination for them. I wrote a
piece after the book call saying it's called college or Chipotle.
And that's basically the choice that we're giving young people today. Right,
(38:29):
you can go to college or you can work a
frontline job at Chippotle. And that's that's it. Right.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
There's really nothing in between.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Which is crazy because we know there are like millions
of jobs that fall somewhere in between on the spectrum.
It's a spectrum of a career workforce opportunities. It doesn't
have to be that bold and that crummy of a dichotomy.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
That's exactly right. And other countries are doing a much
better job of that than we are, And all we
need to do is look at what they're doing and
begin to replicate some of their policies. But the good
news is that we're making some progress. I mentioned California.
There was some some positive news in the minibus that
funded the federal government six weeks ago that directed the
Department of Labor to begin changing the way they're funding apprenticeships,
(39:12):
which is going to be really beneficial starting in twenty five.
So things are things are moving in the right direction here.
And the other piece of good news is that everyone agrees. Right.
I speak to progressive democrats, I speak to conservative Republicans.
Everyone's in favor of this, so it will it will happen.
We'd like it to happen.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Quicker love it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, what is it that Churchill says about America that
we finally picked the right thing after exhausting every other
viable opportunity. That feels like this for.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Apprenticeships as well, taking.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
The slow round, And I will say that, you know,
the challenges on college campuses are are also going to
help accelerate it. You know, traditional colleges are are kind
of at a probably historic low in terms of public
opinion and public and marketing.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
So okay, well, yes, seaking of high school students and
helping folks to understand the ration now behind the career
paths that they're taking. We've got a few more questions
for you right after the break, along the lines of
maybe guiding younger generations and making the right decisions for
their future. We'll get to that more right after this.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
We're back. We're still talking with Ryan Craig about apprenticeships
a cool way to earn money. While you're learning, you're
growing in your skills, but you're also growing your net worth.
You're avoiding the college debt. And ran we talked about
this just a little bit. You mentioned a couple of
kind of specific degree choices. Hey, if you're going to
go be an engineer, that's great. Apprenticeships might not be
the best route for you. Go get the four year degree.
(40:47):
The college debt you take on is going to be
more than worth it in the end. Let's say apprenticeships
do become more common, and you know, you were just mentioning, Hey,
the writing is on the wall. Things are looking better
than they ever have before in this country. On that front,
how would an individual decide whether that's a better route
for them than going to get the traditional four year degree.
(41:07):
It's obviously going to take a lot of years, a
lot of messaging, a lot of infrastructure to kind of
start to make these changes and start to point people
in a different direction. But then how would people know
which choice is right for them?
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Yeah, look, I mean I think that the reality is
that the vast majority would be would benefit from some
kind of earn and learn option after high school first,
before college, for the reasons we discussed in terms of
becoming a more informed consumer of post secondary education. I
think those that would want to go straight are those
who are admitted to a you know, selective university where
(41:42):
it's affordable for them, you know, great, go and have
that you know, wonderful experience. And those who are you know,
very confident that they'll be able to complete a you know,
an engineering or computer science program at any any universe.
I think that those are those are kind of the
two categories of please go ahead. But if you're going
(42:05):
because you can't think of another option and you don't
know what you're interested in, then you're probably going to
be better off working for a few years in a
job that isn't Chipotle, in a job that actually has
a career path and where there's built in training, and
where you could continue if you if you so wished
(42:25):
to earn a living or after a couple of years,
you could stop, take stock of your interest capabilities, you've
made some money, You've probably have some savings at that point,
and decide, you know, what post secondary pathway or program
makes the most sense for you. I think ninety nine
times out of one hundred, you're going to make a
better choice than you would have a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I totally agree. Yeah, And this is not only for
students who are trying to figure out what to do
with their lives. But I mean as a parent, like,
who wants to see their kid go off and be
so encumbered by the amount of debt that all these
and I'm not taking on those parent plus loans to
help come on, Yes, absolutely not. Yeah, and you to
want to prevent that for yourself as the parent, but
you also want to prevent that burden for your kids, yes,
(43:08):
because yeah, you see the millstone around the neck that
it is for so many the pain of the decades
of multiple years of student loan payments.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
That, yeah, even if it does lead to a productive career,
still like, student loan debt is out of control. So Ryan,
where right now, given the infrastructure that currently exists for
people who are listening, whether it's parents or it's those
upper rage high schoolers, where should they go If they're
resonating with us and they're saying, yeah, I do want
to avoid the college debt, and yeah, I didn't think
(43:38):
maybe that was the best track for me. Maybe an
apprenticeship would make sense. Where can they go to find
and land an apprenticeship? Are there any like current resources
websites that they should be Specific employers, Yes, specific employers
who specialize in this what should they do next?
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Well, it's funny you asked.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
The directory of my book, Apprenticedation is a list of
all active apprenticeships in the US where they're actually hiring apprentices,
where you could apply for a job as an apprentice tomorrow.
And I'm sorry to say the list isn't longer. They're
about two hundred or so programs listed, and not all
(44:15):
of them are hiring large numbers of apprentices. But that's
the state of where we are today. So you can
find it in the back of Apprentice.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Nation, the Apprentice Nation, that's right. Yeah, And of course
we'll link to your book, Ryan, and we'll also check
out that article as well, the College or Chipotle article,
because I think that might help folks to enter into
the conversation thinking about it in an informed way as well. So, Ryan,
thank you so much for taking the time joining us
today on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Wonderful. Well, you guys are vent terrific.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Really enjoyed it, Matt, that was a great conversation. And
I love talking about apprenticeship, So I love talking about
something that gets so little press, I know, but could
be I think so game changing for the way we
do higher education and careers in this country. It's so
sad that we kind of turned our back. Actually, the
very beginning of Ryan's book, he talks about how apprenticeships
were kind of core to the founding of the nation
(45:06):
and our founding fathers, and we've just kind of like
the college for all sort of approach. Again, not trying
to hate on college, but just saying there are a
different structure different folks.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
We's gone really hard in that direction over the past
forty fifty years. Yeah. And Johnny Tremaine baby and science,
he wasn't a white collar worker. He was a silversmith. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, And again, like the so much comes out, we're
valueists to you and me. And if your awesome college
education cost you four thousand dollars, that's one thing. But
when it cost you four hundred thousand dollars, you have
to maybe at least consider other alternatives. Yeah, and yeah,
I do love too that Ryan pointed out, Hey, guess what,
there's a long list of potential apprenticeships you could pursue
(45:48):
in his book, which is definitely worth the read.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Heck, yeah, is that your big takeaway? Or you still thinking,
so I got one? You go, you start Okay, so
my big takeaway is just as individuals the benefit of
something like an appent I love how he pointed out
that we will then be able to become informed consumers
of higher education, which I love and like that just
resonates so much with how I view the world as
(46:10):
well as far as like I want my kids, And
I've even said this very statement before. I might change
my mind a decade down the road, but I truly
do think I want my kids to take a gap
year because you just learn so much by being out
in the world and not just being immediately shunted pushed
along the education track. And that's so in the status
that he pointed to at the early on point to
(46:32):
that fact, right that the like we're number one and
the number of students that make it into college as
far as the immediate accessibility of it, but we're like
dead last when it comes to actual completion, which tells
me that there are all the incentives in the world
to get kids in college, but it doesn't necessarily mean
it's the best thing for all of those two it's
a leahyesive, you know, yeah, I completely agree. And the
options that become available when you consider something like an apprenticeship.
(46:55):
I think are are so incredible, And the analogy I
immediately thought of. I thought about mentioning it in the moment,
but he said, other than a house, this is the
most expensive decision that you'd make. And I mean it
made me immediately think of like a couple or an
individual who whatever moving to a new city and immediately
buying a house without doing any due diligence and just
being like, all right, well, I got to pick a neighborhood.
I don't know, I've heard something about this, so I'm
(47:15):
just going to go do that. That is not how
you go about buying a home. You you rent for
a couple of years, you get a feel for the neighborhood.
You are able to do your due diligence, and I
think that's one of the things that in an apprenticeship
allows you to do. Just like you would take your
time in buying a home, I think we should also
take our time when it comes to committing to a
path of education and what it is that high school
(47:37):
grads in particular went to study.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, I think the gap year might not even change
the course you ought to take, but it gives you
maybe more courage and belief of the direction you're going in,
and it might change things up to you a little
bit and might say like, wait a second, no, no,
I do want to go in this other path instead.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
And I was going to go to college. Oh my gosh,
that's not right for me. It's bride as your horizons though, Yeah,
Like I feel like they at least thought them for you. Yes,
I think the apprenticeship gives you experience right on the
job as you are learning about something. I think what
a gap year does is that it broadens your horizons
and it helps you to think through the many different
options and whether or not this is something you want
to do at all, and it just helps you to
see what else is out there.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
And you mentioned I think the quote that I was
going to call out to the same thing well when
he said become an informed consumer of post secondary education.
And I think that ultimately at the it's not to
say apprenticeships are for everyone, colleges for everyone. The truth
is there is a broad spectrum of options that you
can take, and we have boiled it down to one
thing and made it sound like that's the right choice
for ninety nine percent of folks and the truth is
(48:32):
it's not. It is, especially given the high costs of
college today. So the best thing you can do is
not make a knee jerk decision just based on this conversation.
It's just more information to help you be an informed
consumer and know what your options are. That's every time
we talk about college, Matt with with whoever we bring
on the show, whether we're conversations with with and Garcia
(48:53):
who talks about reducing the cost of college and trying
to get all the scholarships available to you, right, all
these conversations we have on the show, it's all about
helping you make an informed decision. It's not saying this
is the right path for you. We don't know who
you are or what you want out of life. And
I just I think the more options to better and
that's why we as a country should do a better
job making apprenticeships available.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
To more and more folks. Yeah, we just want you
to hit pause and not mindlessly consume whether that's the
next thing that's that found its way in your Amazon
car or something that is incredibly expensive, like a higher education.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I'm going to go to the nicest college, the best
college as rated by US News and World Report, which
is dumb. Anyway, I'm going to go there because they
accepted me. Well, how much is it going to cost?
And what's what are you going to major in? And
what are you going to do with that degree at
the end of the day. I mean, those are all
really important questions. And yeah, I think that's that's part
of the problem is people just go to the college
of their dreams and then they graduate four years or
(49:46):
sometimes six or seven years later, or sometimes they don't
graduate at all, and yeah, they're left in actually sometimes
a worse spot because of it.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
All Right, our beer that you and I enjoyed during
this episode was an Adjustable Rate, which is quite When
I saw this one, I was like, I gotta pick
this one because it's not often that beers are named
after financial term that we talk about on the podcast,
but this is another beer by Inner Voice Brewing.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
What were your thoughts, Well, one, I'm curious why they
gave it this name adjustable Rate.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah, no, I guess they're just well it says it's
in collaboration with Magnanimous Brewing. Okay, maybe they do more
stuff like that. I could never It doesn't seem like
it's necessarily within their branding as much. They're more like,
you know, it's inner voice, it's more contemplative memory farm, right, like.
So that's one of their beers that we had on recently.
(50:33):
But I really like this one.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
I mean, I like a good barley wine. This was
sweeter than your average barley wine. I think it was
the orange peel and vanilla combo that led it to
being just like less abrasive or.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
The overall weight of this beer that it's just a beast.
It's a beast of a beer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
I like the balance of this one struck too, because
I think sometimes barley wines can be too heavy, and yeah,
this is a big beer, but I think some of
that sweetness coming from some of the adjuncts that they
put in makes it more approachable.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
There's almost like a tartness like sharpness that comes from
the specifically the orange as well, because without I don't know,
it's I think in the same way that sometimes you
add like you get the faint Do you ever get
the fancier chocolates from Trader Joe's or Aldi or whatever?
You know, it's like, but it's also like with bits
of orange or whatever, like orange is typically something that
you include in chocolate, and I think in part it's
(51:19):
because it's it's to kind of be a foil to
the sweet softness of the chocolate, where this is just
like this little sharp zest and I don't know, I'm
picking up on the zestiness of the orange. I feel
like without the orange in this, it might be just
as sweet, but it would be not as well balanced.
That's a good point in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
No, I think you're right. I think the orange adds
a lot to the roundness of the of the flavor
and just yeah, makes it a multi pronged mouth attack.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, exactly. It looks like it looks like they bred
this for their second anniversary summit. I don't know what
that looked like when they all got together, But in quotes,
it says too big to fail, which is another financial term,
doesn't referring to the banks back during the Great Recession.
These guys make good beers. I love it. It makes me
want to check out around Magnanimous because maybe they're are
(52:05):
they're broom beers that are super financial, wonky nerdy that
we might be into rhythm with literal dollar bills or
pennies in there. Yeah, but yeah, this is a great
conversation with Ryan Craig and we'll make sure to link
to his book the article as well that we referenced,
and you can find that all on the website at
how tomoney dot com, no doubt. All right, buddy, Until
next time, best friends out and best friends out,
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today we're talking about apprenticeships, how to earn and learn
simultaneously with Ryan Craig.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, so the notion that an individual could earn a
living while simultaneously learning how to do their job is
such a foreign concept, you know, Like, that is not
how we do things here in America. It takes money
to make money, baby, That's how we do it here.
You've got to go to the most expensive college. You
got to take on boat loads of student loans, saddle
(00:48):
yourself with years of debt if you want a decent job.
These days, some of the most man selective universities, they're
quickly approaching the one hundred thousand dollar mark for a
single year of college. And while we are fans of
investing in yourself, like, it just definitely looks like we're
approaching a tipping point. Nothing literally has risen faster than
the price of college over the decades. But what if
(01:11):
there was another way? And we're joined by education and
workforce expert Ryan Craig, who says that there are alternatives.
His book Apprentice Nation explores how a modern apprenticeship system,
how that will allow students and job seekers to jumpstart
their careers by learning while they earn, leading to greater
(01:32):
workforce diversity and geographical mobility. So Ryan, thank you for
joining us today on the podcast to talk about this.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Great to be here. Matt in Jill appreciate it. And
you know, to your point about one hundred thousand dollars college.
The New York Times just wrote a piece a couple
of weeks ago calculating that Vanderbilt University is the first
where if you add the room board and fees to tuition,
and then you add in the cost of a couple
flights a year to and from school, you're over one
(01:58):
hundred grand built.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
There, you go.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Sounds cheap to me, Ryan On, I mean, what's the
big fuss come on a bit of money?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Is it grows on trees?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I just pick it out in my backyard. The first
question we ask everybody who comes on the show, by
the way, Ryan, is what their craft beer equivalent is.
Matt and I spend more money than some people think
it's sane on craft beer. But we're day, we're doing
the right stuff at the same time, saving and investing
for a future. So what's that for you, what's your
kind of equivalent splurge.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, I'm afraid it's not as going to be as
interesting as craft beer. I'm a runner, and I don't
have that much time between my work and my my
writing and my policy nonprofit work. So I like to
when i'm running be able to catch up on TV
shows that I've missed. And so even though I live
(02:46):
in LA I run in my basement on a treadmill,
and I have the top of the line treadmill.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
That I have splurged.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
So most people will have like a consumer couple of
thousand dollars maybe treadmill mind costs a lot more than that,
but I use it and I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So okay, so you're running in you're catching up on entertainment.
Does it have some sort of like twelve inch screen,
like this beautiful display that's automatically.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Desc beautiful screen. Yeah, big beautiful screen right in front
of it. Surround sound, it's great.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Oh treadmill? What's the round sound? Baby? Okay, So what's
the deal by Dolby? You know, I see these treadmills
that are curved? Is yours like that?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
What are those treadmills?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
All? It's not I don't understand that either. That looks looks.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Painful, Okay, you and me both. I don't know what
those what those are for, but let's dive into it.
You wrote a book about faster, cheaper alternatives to college
before your current book about apprenticeships. But there is obviously
a clear thread between the two. Why is this area,
why is this domain so important to you?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Well, I mean I've made my career in higher education.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
My first job twenty five years ago was at Columbia University,
which has had.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
A difficult, difficult month. I don't say.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
They've been in the news.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Since then, I have helped build universities, worked at universities,
worked with universities, build companies that partner with universities, and
have a love for higher education. The challenge that we have,
of course, is that we're facing a three part crisis
in higher education, and that has nothing to do with
(04:25):
the protests. The first is a crisis of completion. So
only about half of students who matriculate into a college
or university actually complete the programm or degree that they
set out to complete. So that's a problem. We have
the highest rate of matriculation among developed countries, so we
(04:46):
have great access, but we have the lowest rate of completion,
and some community colleges it can be as low as
fifteen percent. Then we have a crisis of affordability. So
the one hundred thousand dollars degree is one hundred thousand
dollars a year degree is nigh. But you know, beyond that,
the average student who takes on student loans, which is
(05:08):
about seventy percent of all students, if they complete and graduate,
they're graduating now with about fifty thousand dollars in student
loan debt. And no other country has that kind of issue,
settling its young people with that much debt as they're
trying to launch their careers. And then third is employability.
(05:28):
You know, if every student graduated into a sixty thousand
dollars a year job, they'd be able to support that
kind of student loan debt. But Strata just put out
a new study last month showing that fifty two percent
of recent grads are underemployed in their first jobs, which
means that they probably could have gotten those jobs without
(05:50):
the investment of time and money in those degrees. And
we know that if you're underemployed in your first job.
Two thirds of the time you're underemployed for five years later.
Half the time you're under employed a decade later. Right,
careers are path dependent, and so something is not working.
And I think that the fundamental change is that the
(06:12):
economy has been transformed. Digital transformation has changed the economy,
changed the jobs we all do. We're all using technology
in our jobs. Many of us are actually working in.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
The tech sector.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
But if you look at the programs of study, if
you go and you go back to your alma mater
and you look around, it looks almost identical to the
way you know. Yes, maybe students have phones, and maybe
there's a data science program, but by and large, same program,
same departmental structure as when you attended.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
And something is not working.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And what's not working is that employers are having an
increasingly hard time finding the skills that they're looking for.
They're looking for discrete combinations of digital skills, business skills, knowledge,
role knowledge, and colleges and universities, I think are doing
as good a job as they've ever done on the
sort of core cognitive skills, critical thinking, problem solving, communication skills,
(07:10):
but they're not doing anything around the specific skills that
employees are looking for in addition, and that's contributing to
the underemployment. And those skills are actually harder to learn
in a classroom than they are by doing so that's
maybe the bridge to sort of earning and learning.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Is part of the problem that the workplace is the
nail and college has been seen as the hammer. It's
like we've essentially made it a one size fits all solution,
even though in actuality it's not working out that way,
and we've pushed everybody in that direction. And yet, like
in your last book that you released in twenty eighteen,
you talk about other solutions that are superior to the
(07:51):
current for your meth that's even before we get into
like in depth talk about apprenticeships, Like what are some
of those other routes that are superior that we're just
like neglecting completely.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, look, I mean, you know, we coined the term
fast last mile training to reflect sort of what employers
are looking for, these digital skills, business skills, business knowledge
that colleges aren't aren't providing. And there's a whole industry
now of alternative boot camps and online credentials and industry
(08:22):
recognized certificate programs that may take you as little as
a few months, and you have a credential that an
employer will value and hire you on without regard to
whether you have a degree in many cases, So the challenge,
and as you're right, my last book was sort of
a guided tour of that emerging last mile training landscape,
(08:46):
which is the direct result of those three crises that
we're seeing in higher education, particularly around employability. But those,
you know, those programs are still what I would call
train and prey programs, which is to say, there's no
guarantee of a job right you graduate from you know,
the most well intentioned coding boot camp. You know, employer
(09:08):
is not going to know what that program is, necessarily
what skills you've gained, and it's certainly not going to
close what is emerging as perhaps the biggest problem facing
new grads, which is this experience gap where employers are
increasingly explicitly or implicitly demanding six, twelve, eighteen, twenty four
(09:28):
months of real, relevant, paid, sometimes even full time work
experience and jobs that used to be entry level jobs.
And AI is going to completely turn that experience gap
into a chasm because the bargain that employers have always
made with their entry level workers is you don't need
(09:49):
skills or experience, you just need kind of you know,
the potential and the interest. You'll, yeah, exactly, and you'll
do you know, kind of some grunt work menial work
while you learn the ropes and become productive well with AI.
That grunt work and media work is going to go away.
You know, no investment banking analyst is going to be
spending you know, fifty hours a week building PowerPoint.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Slides for decks.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
They're going to be due to spending an hour on
that using AI, and they'll be expected to spend the
other forty nine hours doing higher value client work, product work,
you name it. But the problem is that that higher
value work is not going to be possible without experience.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
And so you're going to.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
See employers demanding years of work experience for jobs that
used to be entry level jobs. And it's really going
to pull the ladder up and away from young Americans
who've gone down this tuition, tuition based, debt based career
launch pathway, which is really unfortunate because among all developed countries,
(10:51):
we're first on tuition based, debt based career launch infrastructure.
We're last on earn and learn infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And that's the problem with those sort of those smile
training boot camps or online certifications. It seems like what
you're saying too, is that the employers they don't necessarily
trust that because they've got no idea, they don't have
a whole lot of experience. They're as opposed to if
they were on site, if they had the ability to
learn firsthand what it is that they needed to do.
And that kind of leads us to apprenticeships. And this
(11:19):
might be kind of a weird question, but like, how
do you define an apprenticeship, right, because I think you've
said that it's not workforce training, like you are actually
earning some money. So can you kind of drill down
on that and explain to listeners kind of what that
apprenticeship can look like.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, an apprenticeship quite simply is a full time job
that has a couple of distinct characteristics. One is that
you're not expected to have the skills or experience coming in.
Two is that you're being provided with formal and informal
training as part of that part of that job. So
the formal training is actually you're going to be in
(11:55):
a classroom for the equivalent of kind of a day,
a week or perhaps as long as a year or
sometimes two years, and you're actually learning everything you need
to know about the job. And then there's an informal
on the job training component to it, where your supervisors,
your managers who you're working for, are supposed to sort
of continue to train you on the on the job.
(12:19):
And then after a period of time one year, two years,
three years, you're just going to transition to become a
regular employee. You don't have to apply for a new job.
You just sort of continue. You're no longer an apprentice.
You're you know, a regular, a regular employee. So that's apprenticeship,
if you know, there's confusion around it because there are
other terms like pre apprenticeship, youth apprenticeship, those are those
(12:40):
are if you're not a full time employee, you're not
an apprentice, period end of story.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Because internships, some people confuse internships and apprenticeship sometimes too right,
it's it's like potential onboarding, but you're also not a
full time employee. You're yeah, cut leg go at any
time after the well, yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
An internship.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Internship is like apprenticeship turned on its head because you're
an apprentice is a full time worker who's doing training
as part of his or her job. An intern is
someone who's engaged enrolled in an educational typically post secondary
program college program where during the program, whether it's over
(13:20):
the summer or during during a term, they're engaging and
usually part time, sometimes full time work over the summer,
sometimes paid too often unpaid, which makes it kind of inequitable.
But you return then from it's time limited and then
you return to you know, finishing your program of study,
(13:40):
so you know, a thumbnail apprenticeship. Apprentices are workers who
have training built in in terms or students who are
doing a sort of temporary work experience.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
So tell me what's the benefit for the employer, because
I'm thinking about this from the perspective of somebody who
employees people, spends money for hopefully productive labor. And you
hire somebody and not only are you paying them a
salary you know, probably not commensurate to the people obviously
that have been around for five ten years or something
like that and are highly productive. But I'm having to
pay the salary of someone and teach them at the
(14:14):
same time. That requires like a commitment, dedication. What sort
of commitment are they getting in return? So what are
the stakes like for these employers who participate in apprenticeship programs.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Well, depending on how you define it, too high or
too low, meaning that you know your average employer is
not going to do it.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And that's kind of the secret of apprenticeship is that
where apprenticeships thrive around the world, whether it be in
you know, Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, or here in the
US in the building trades. They're not thriving because employers
in those countries or sectors are more benevolent or more
far sighted. They're thriving because there are intermediaries who are
(15:00):
doing the work of setting up and running these programs.
And these intermediaries are doing so because they're either required
to do so by law or they're incentivized to do
so by the government. And so in Germany, the reason
that you know, the German apprenticeship program is a system
is the kind of the gold standard is that you
have these massive, powerful chambers of commerce across every industry
(15:25):
that are required by law to work with unions and
run these programs for the benefit of employers, and they're
funded to do so you know, I kind of laugh
every time I see some report of a state junket
going over to Germany to drink the reaseling and eat
the schnitzel and look at their apprenticeship programs. It's not opposite.
We don't have that infrastructure. We can't, we can't, we
(15:48):
can't do that. But what's interesting is that the UK
and Australia and France thirty years ago looked a lot
like the US in terms of having a very small
apprenticeship system, like almost all in the building trades, like
we do today. And today in those countries there are
(16:08):
eight to ten x where we are in terms of
apprentices as a percentage of the workforce. And it's very
common in those countries to launch careers in finance, tech,
healthcare as an apprentice. And how did that happen. It's
because governments recognize that employers don't do it themselves. Certainly,
colleges and universities don't set up and run these programs
(16:30):
for the benefit of employers. It requires a concerted effort
to incentivize and establish a robust ecosystem of intermediaries who
are doing this work of setting up and running programs
for the benefit of employers. And so now in the
UK you have this ecosystem of twelve hundred apprenticeship service providers.
These are nonprofit organizations and more often former staffing companies
(16:55):
HR services companies that have launched businesses as apprenticeship service
providers because there's government funding and incentive to do so,
and so they're now running around the country knocking on
doors of every employer offering to set up and run
apprenticeship programs across every sector.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
So you won't find a.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Larger mid sized employer in the UK that hasn't been
approached by a half dozen of these apprenticeship service providers.
It's the opposite here. You know, you won't find any
employer who's been approached by any you know company or
organization offering to set up and help them run an
apprenticeship program. If you know, the idea occurs to you know,
(17:33):
an HR leader or a CEO at an American company,
the assumption is, well, we'd have to do it ourselves,
and for exactly the reasons you stated. The math doesn't
work because you're you're not only paying for the training,
but you're paying and you're hiring and paying an unproductive
worker a worker who's not going to be productive for
an extended period of time, So it doesn't work without
(17:55):
smart policy.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Help help us get get an understanding of I guess
what apprenticeships can because you mentioned some of the different
building trades in Europe. But you also point out though
in your book, that apprenticeships they're not just for blue
collar jobs as well, right, Like, can you talk about
I guess the vast variety of what apprenticeships and what
different industries that you can find those types of opportunities in.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, I mean, apprenticeships are you know, sort of informal
apprenticeships exist everywhere, right, and you know, think about investment,
banking or consulting. You know there's sort of those top
firms or hiring candidates in with potential but without the
skills or experience, and they're they're delivering that to them.
Think about Hollywood and the classic you know, going to
(18:39):
work in the CIA mail room for example. That's you know,
kind of an informal apprenticeship apprenticeship model. But broadly speaking,
apprenticeships work in the trades because they're really good ways
to learn how to use tools, right, And they work
well in the trades because even though you may not
(19:01):
know what you're doing on day one, you can still
kind of hold the tools and you know, help right,
even if you don't know what you're what you're doing.
With the digitization of the economy, everyone needs to know
how to use tools. Now, those may not be tools
that you know require you know, muscle and dexterity. They
may be tools that require understanding how to use certain
(19:23):
software platforms. And that's where we're seeing huge growth in
apprenticeship programs and apprenticeship models in areas like software development,
data analytics, healthcare I, cybersecurity, discrete tech ecosystems like Salesforce, workday, SAP.
(19:45):
You know, these are all areas where you know, higher
education is not you know, preparing and delivering work ready
graduates and apprenticeships are really useful for you know, there's
seven hundred thousand unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the country right now,
(20:06):
and the experience gap in cybersecurity has just exploded over
the last five years. It used to be that a
college grad with some technical acumen could access a job
as a Tier one analyst and a security operations center.
But today, because of automation, tier one analysts have basically
gone away, and the entry level position is what used
(20:28):
to be a Tier two analyst, which demands a CISSP certification,
which is three to five years work experience. So how
do you break into cyber. Well, we need apprenticeship infrastructure
in that space. We need incentives for companies and more
likely intermediaries to hire you know, tens or hundreds of
thousands of young Americans, deliver them the skills are experience,
(20:52):
and kind of serve them up on a silver platter
to the ultimate employers who'll be glad to take them
and put them into those now level you know, tier
two positions.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, it also seems like a just a more optimized,
efficient approach, hopefully allowing a lot of individuals to forsake
some of the diletorious effects of having significant amounts of
student loan debt, especially with the stat you cited something
like forty percent of which those people who even get
the degree find themselves underemployed, not using that degree. So
(21:26):
it's a really really expensive item that you hang on
the wall that's not really paying off in the way
that you hoped.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Ryan, we've got more than we want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
We specifically want to talk about the college verse apprenticeship,
and like are these mutually exclusive? Get to some questions
with you on that. Right after this, we are back.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
For the break, still talking with Ryan Craig about apprenticeships,
and right, like, can you basically just share with us
like an elevator pitch for an apprenticeship versus going to college,
because yeah, I think there are a lot of folks
who might be you know, they're kind of they're hearing
you extol the benefits and how that could get you
placed in a position where you're going to earn a
(22:11):
lot of money while simultaneously not incurring a whole lot
of student loans. But yeah, help somebody to do a
paradigm shift're used to it. Yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah,
so somebody who might be grappling with us, I would
love to hear the elevator pitch for the apprenticeship.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
The elevator pitch is that obviously college for all isn't
working for all right now, given the affordability and employability
challenges that we're seeing, an apprenticeship model or an earn
a learned model is a more equitable model right where
we're not asking students to take a financial risk we're
not asking to take an employment risk because you're hired
(22:45):
and you're being paid from day one. You're being delivered
the skills and experience that you're going to need to
at least start to launch your career now. It doesn't
an apprenticeship is not necessarily exclusive from a college model.
You can do an apprenticeship and then perhaps return and
earn a degree or some kind of certificate or post
(23:07):
secondary credential. But I think that a model where we
have as many apprentice jobs as we have places in
freshman classes around the country so we can give high
school graduates a real choice. Do you want to invest
now in tuition and student loans, or do you want
(23:29):
to take a less risky pathway, earn and learn for
a few years, develop a better sense of what your
interests are, what your capabilities are, and then perhaps either
continue to work or return and be a more informed
consumer of post secondary education. I mean, think about it.
Other than buying a house. It's probably the most significant
(23:51):
investment that most people make in their lives, and most
young people are doing it at the age of eighteen
nineteen twenty with very little information about what their interests are,
what their capabilities are, and specifically how effective the schools
are and programs that they're planning to or considering it.
Those schools are to help them achieve the achieve their.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Goals, and those schools aren't really held to a standard
of being forced to tell incoming students about what they
are likely to learn. Hey, here are the stat like.
You can find some of those things, but they're opaque,
they're hard to find, They're hard to figure out, especially
when you're a seventeen year old. Eighteen year old applying
to a bunch of different schools, you're not equipped to
figure out the ROI of that college degree. I will say, though,
(24:37):
you made it sound like apprenticeships are a superior choice
for a whole lot of people. I'm curious to hear
you take because I'm sure you get flogged with the
statistic every time you're interviewed about the fact that college
grads make a million dollars more over their earning lifetime
than the typical high school graduate. Why, in your opinion,
is that misleading when we're kind of including apprenticeships in
(24:58):
the conversation.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I love this.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
In a year's long debate with the progenitors of that
status to the Georgetown Center of Education and Workforce. A
couple of problems with that. One is those are aggregate numbers.
Those numbers come from graduates who may have graduated twenty thirty,
forty years ago, sort of prior to digital transformation. So
(25:22):
it's not reflective of what's happened to grads in the
last five or ten years, or what's going to happen
to this year's class or students who are matriculating in
college for this year.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
So that's one thing.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
The bigger problem is that there's a huge self selection problem.
So we know for a fact that people who young
people who successfully run the gamut and a complete college
overcoming all of these challenges come from wealthier, more stable,
(26:01):
and frankly whider backgrounds than the typical the typical American
and those those characteristics are also characteristic of people who
are going to earn more without regard to what educational
program they pursue or if they even pursue one. And
obviously they you know, not only that, but they they've
(26:23):
demonstrated these are people who you know, have the clearly
have the capability to persist, you know, on a difficult
pathway four year pathway, life hasn't gotten in the way
they've completed college. Those are also characteristics of people who
are going to make more money. So I have never
seen a study that is somehow correcting for that self
(26:45):
selection bias. And I suspect that I do think there
is a college premium. I don't think it's a million dollars.
I think it may be a couple hundred thousand dollars.
And I think I think it's shrinking.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So you might say we're comparing apples to cabbage or
something like that, right, Yeah, No, I.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Think that's I think that's right. I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I think that you know the idea, and of course
you know the what what whatever? The number is a
couple you know, maybe it's half of half a million.
That is, you know, kind of a rounding error relative
to the differences between majors that we see. So if
you're going to major in engineering or computer science, uh,
(27:21):
and you and I and you tell me that you're
going to complete that program, I don't care where you go.
If you know that you're going to complete a program
in those areas, you're almost always better off doing that
than even perhaps an apprenticeship program that's a good investment.
But if you but if you tell me that, maybe
you even want to do that, but you're going to
(27:42):
be crowded out because you know, the public colleges and
universities that the vast majority of Americans attend, they have
limited enrollment in those programs, and most most students who
want to major in those areas are actually shunted off
into less remunerative programs in majors. So if you tell
(28:04):
me that you're going to major in psychology or sociology
or unfortunately in the humanities, I'm very skeptical that there's
any college premium right now, and you're probably better off
pursuing some kind of earn and learned pathway, becoming a
more informed consumer of post secondary education, and likely achieving
(28:26):
a higher return on investment.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, and I feel like a part of that one
million more over your lifetime problem as well is the
fact that, like, of course, this is sort of like
you said, it's it's aggregated, Like the data is based
on previous years worth of data, and over the decades
you see more and more students, more and more graduates
from college, and so like if you just look at
the simple supply and demand. If you look at simple economics,
(28:50):
are there's more supply of grads, and so that premium
is going to in my mind, it's only going to
continue to decrease, you know, with the additional potential process
supply of plumbers and then they're getting exactly Yeah, I
don't think that we're saying that like that's what everyone
should do, but like, of course you've got to take
the financial considerations into account. But so going back a
little bit, like you mentioned other countries like Germany, right,
(29:10):
there are systems in place, so there is an infrastructure.
What are the gears behind successful apprenticeship program? Like, what
does it take in order for something like this to
get off the ground.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
So I mean it starts with employers, right, There is
no apprenticeship program unless you have an employer willing to
hire an apprentice. Now, the problem is, as I said,
employers need help in order to say yes to apprenticeship
and yes to hiring apprentices. And that's what we've seen
in other countries as well. So the question is how
do we create this robust ecosystem of intermediaries apprenticeship service
(29:43):
providers who can actively sell apprenticeship and apprentice jobs to
employers and in many cases kind of provide a turnkey
solution so that all the employers doing is saying yes
to a trained new employee and paying the intermediary for
(30:03):
that resource. That's actually what my day job is. My
firm is Achieved Partners. We're the leading private equity firm
in workforce and we build apprenticeship infrastructure. We buy business
services companies and sectors where there's a talent gap and
we transform them into apprenticeship service providers and talent engines
(30:25):
for these talent starved talent starve sectors. But to do
it broadly, to do it at the level of the
UK or Australia or France, we need to invest. And
today we spend over five hundred billion dollars taxpayer money
federal and state on accredited colleges and universities. We spend
(30:46):
less than three hundred millions, so less than one one
thousandth that that amount on earn and learn pathways. Other
countries on a per capita basis are spending you know,
almost two orders of magnitude more on earn and learn pathways,
So that's a huge Like the UK is it about
(31:07):
forty billion on a per capita basis a relative to
our three hundred three hundred million, so it's a and
of course that money is making it much easier for
an attractive for intermediaries to enter the market, build this
infrastructure that we're missing and begin running around to employers
(31:30):
offering to set up and doing the work of actually
running apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship programs are not easy to run.
There's about ten different things that need to happen that
an employer is not doing today, and most of the
most important and hardest of which, again is employing and
paying an unproductive worker for a period of time. So
the best the best scenario for the employer, as I say,
(31:50):
is what if you have an.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Intermediary that's offering.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
To do all that and actually employ and be the
employer of record of that apprentice until they become productive.
And those are the kinds of models that we're seeing
grow rapidly in the US, but only in sectors where
the demand is just so the gap is just so
large that clients are willing to pay for it. We
need investment so those earn and learned pathways can flourish
(32:19):
across the economy.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Ryan I could hear some of the limited government types saying,
hold on, wait a second, you want to use tax
dollars to pay for some of these apprenticeship programs. Look
at the national debt, look at the deficit. We can't
afford something like this. What would your response be to that?
And I mean, can you help us understand how much
money is being spent in the higher education system in
(32:41):
general at the federal levels. I don't know, maybe maybe
these are funds that are better spent.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, well that's exactly it.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
So five hundred billion federal and state taxpayer dollars on
colleges and universities, three hundred million today on earn and learn.
If you compare a college student with an apprentice, and
you ask how much public support are they wedding? For
every dollar of public support that an apprentice receives, college
students getting fifty bucks.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
So I don't know whether the right ratio is one
to one or two to one or ten to one,
but I'm pretty sure it's not fifty.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
To one or a thousand.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah. Yeah, So we I mean, you know, all we're
saying is we need a more balanced approach. And there
are states like California that have gone ahead and begun
investing in that infrastructure before even before you beginning to
rebalance away from traditional colleges and university. So, California last
year launched one hundred and s twenty five million dollar
(33:36):
initiative to help build this earn and learn infrastructure and
it's working. Apprenticeships are growing twenty thirty percent a year
in California right now.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, there's some good news out there. There are states
who are creating this infrastructure, and like there are also businesses.
I mean, so even though we've got a long ways
to go, there are some opportunities out there. Can you
highlight some of the most interesting apprenticeship opportunities that are
currently in existence in the US?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, I mean we're seeing this higher trained deploy model,
which is truly these sort of turnkey apprenticeship programs where
business services companies are adding this as a new element
of their value proposition there. You know, for example, we
have a company that is a Salesforce solutions business and
(34:26):
they launched the first registered apprenticeship program for Salesforce and
now they're able to deliver Salesforce talent to their clients
in addition to Salesforce solutions. And it's made a world
of difference for for the company and for their clients.
And so we see talent as a you know, really
exciting new you know, for every problem comes up an opportunity.
(34:50):
We have a we have a talent problem, we have
a problem with a sort of unbalanced education workforce system.
But that that can that can create opportunities for companies
in sectors where there is a talent gap. And that's
exactly what our firm, Achieved Partners does, is we partner
with founders and we help build these new apprenticeship models
(35:14):
and sectors like cybersecurity, workday SAP, supply chain, even some
healthcare sectors as well.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Okay, how would a resurgence of apprenticeship programs change the
way the high school's done? Because typically the put at
least the high school I went to, it was college
track all the way, baby, And if you weren't the
kind of person who was going to go get a
four year degree, I think you were left to your
own devices, like you didn't really know what to do
because everybody was supposed to be on this four year
(35:44):
college track. How would more apprenticeship programs impact high schools?
And kind of maybe some of the incentives or some
of the ways, especially that high school seniors are led
to think about their future.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
So, yeah, i'd say forty fifty years.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Ago, that wasn't the case in high schools had you
had two tracks. You had a college track, and you
had a career in technical education or vocational track as well. Today,
thanks to decades of college for all, there is only
one track. And you know it's it's demonstrated no better
than the fact that, especially now without required standardized testing,
(36:23):
the only quantitative metric that colleges can evaluate as your
GPA and AP and honors classes, which is sort of
the pathway to selective colleges, are weighted on a five
point scale, whereas every other class is on a four
point scale. So you decide to take a CTE class
(36:45):
in high school, some sort of vocational class, you're penalizing.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
You're screwing yourself over basically.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, exactly exactly, And so ct has withered on the
vine as a result. But if you can imagine a
world where we have as many apprentice jobs as there
are places, and there are apprentice programs across the economy,
then there truly is a destination for high school grads.
Other than college. And I think that's the key to
(37:13):
rejuvenating CTE at high school, at the high school level,
and that's really exciting, and that's actually an issue as well.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
I mean, you want one.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
I don't know if you're familiar with the work of
Richard Reeves, who's talked about the particular challenges that our
education system is having for young for boys and young
young men, and how they're underachieving, and how there are
some colleges now that are you know, almost two thirds.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Female young women thriving in the higher education system as
it's currently constructed, young men less.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
So yeah, at every level though, I mean met young
you know both boys at every level, boys are behind
the system is not set up for them. You know,
there needs to be a more an option for boys
and young men that's more immediately engaging for them where
they can see the result in the rationale for attending
(38:07):
and engaging and doing work and succeeding in their in
their programs. And CTE is clearly clearly has TOULD should
play a part in that. But again, you can't rejuvenate
ct unless there's a destination for them. I wrote a
piece after the book call saying it's called college or Chipotle.
And that's basically the choice that we're giving young people today. Right,
(38:29):
you can go to college or you can work a
frontline job at Chippotle. And that's that's it. Right.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
There's really nothing in between.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Which is crazy because we know there are like millions
of jobs that fall somewhere in between on the spectrum.
It's a spectrum of a career workforce opportunities. It doesn't
have to be that bold and that crummy of a dichotomy.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
That's exactly right. And other countries are doing a much
better job of that than we are, And all we
need to do is look at what they're doing and
begin to replicate some of their policies. But the good
news is that we're making some progress. I mentioned California.
There was some some positive news in the minibus that
funded the federal government six weeks ago that directed the
Department of Labor to begin changing the way they're funding apprenticeships,
(39:12):
which is going to be really beneficial starting in twenty five.
So things are things are moving in the right direction here.
And the other piece of good news is that everyone agrees. Right.
I speak to progressive democrats, I speak to conservative Republicans.
Everyone's in favor of this, so it will it will happen.
We'd like it to happen.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Quicker love it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, what is it that Churchill says about America that
we finally picked the right thing after exhausting every other
viable opportunity. That feels like this for.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Apprenticeships as well, taking.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
The slow round, And I will say that, you know,
the challenges on college campuses are are also going to
help accelerate it. You know, traditional colleges are are kind
of at a probably historic low in terms of public
opinion and public and marketing.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
So okay, well, yes, seaking of high school students and
helping folks to understand the ration now behind the career
paths that they're taking. We've got a few more questions
for you right after the break, along the lines of
maybe guiding younger generations and making the right decisions for
their future. We'll get to that more right after this.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
We're back. We're still talking with Ryan Craig about apprenticeships
a cool way to earn money. While you're learning, you're
growing in your skills, but you're also growing your net worth.
You're avoiding the college debt. And ran we talked about
this just a little bit. You mentioned a couple of
kind of specific degree choices. Hey, if you're going to
go be an engineer, that's great. Apprenticeships might not be
the best route for you. Go get the four year degree.
(40:47):
The college debt you take on is going to be
more than worth it in the end. Let's say apprenticeships
do become more common, and you know, you were just mentioning, Hey,
the writing is on the wall. Things are looking better
than they ever have before in this country. On that front,
how would an individual decide whether that's a better route
for them than going to get the traditional four year degree.
(41:07):
It's obviously going to take a lot of years, a
lot of messaging, a lot of infrastructure to kind of
start to make these changes and start to point people
in a different direction. But then how would people know
which choice is right for them?
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Yeah, look, I mean I think that the reality is
that the vast majority would be would benefit from some
kind of earn and learn option after high school first,
before college, for the reasons we discussed in terms of
becoming a more informed consumer of post secondary education. I
think those that would want to go straight are those
who are admitted to a you know, selective university where
(41:42):
it's affordable for them, you know, great, go and have
that you know, wonderful experience. And those who are you know,
very confident that they'll be able to complete a you know,
an engineering or computer science program at any any universe.
I think that those are those are kind of the
two categories of please go ahead. But if you're going
(42:05):
because you can't think of another option and you don't
know what you're interested in, then you're probably going to
be better off working for a few years in a
job that isn't Chipotle, in a job that actually has
a career path and where there's built in training, and
where you could continue if you if you so wished
(42:25):
to earn a living or after a couple of years,
you could stop, take stock of your interest capabilities, you've
made some money, You've probably have some savings at that point,
and decide, you know, what post secondary pathway or program
makes the most sense for you. I think ninety nine
times out of one hundred, you're going to make a
better choice than you would have a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I totally agree. Yeah, And this is not only for
students who are trying to figure out what to do
with their lives. But I mean as a parent, like,
who wants to see their kid go off and be
so encumbered by the amount of debt that all these
and I'm not taking on those parent plus loans to
help come on, Yes, absolutely not. Yeah, and you to
want to prevent that for yourself as the parent, but
you also want to prevent that burden for your kids, yes,
(43:08):
because yeah, you see the millstone around the neck that
it is for so many the pain of the decades
of multiple years of student loan payments.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
That, yeah, even if it does lead to a productive career,
still like, student loan debt is out of control. So Ryan,
where right now, given the infrastructure that currently exists for
people who are listening, whether it's parents or it's those
upper rage high schoolers, where should they go If they're
resonating with us and they're saying, yeah, I do want
to avoid the college debt, and yeah, I didn't think
(43:38):
maybe that was the best track for me. Maybe an
apprenticeship would make sense. Where can they go to find
and land an apprenticeship? Are there any like current resources
websites that they should be Specific employers, Yes, specific employers
who specialize in this what should they do next?
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Well, it's funny you asked.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
The directory of my book, Apprenticedation is a list of
all active apprenticeships in the US where they're actually hiring apprentices,
where you could apply for a job as an apprentice tomorrow.
And I'm sorry to say the list isn't longer. They're
about two hundred or so programs listed, and not all
(44:15):
of them are hiring large numbers of apprentices. But that's
the state of where we are today. So you can
find it in the back of Apprentice.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Nation, the Apprentice Nation, that's right. Yeah, And of course
we'll link to your book, Ryan, and we'll also check
out that article as well, the College or Chipotle article,
because I think that might help folks to enter into
the conversation thinking about it in an informed way as well. So, Ryan,
thank you so much for taking the time joining us
today on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Wonderful. Well, you guys are vent terrific.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Really enjoyed it, Matt, that was a great conversation. And
I love talking about apprenticeship, So I love talking about
something that gets so little press, I know, but could
be I think so game changing for the way we
do higher education and careers in this country. It's so
sad that we kind of turned our back. Actually, the
very beginning of Ryan's book, he talks about how apprenticeships
were kind of core to the founding of the nation
(45:06):
and our founding fathers, and we've just kind of like
the college for all sort of approach. Again, not trying
to hate on college, but just saying there are a
different structure different folks.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
We's gone really hard in that direction over the past
forty fifty years. Yeah. And Johnny Tremaine baby and science,
he wasn't a white collar worker. He was a silversmith. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, And again, like the so much comes out, we're
valueists to you and me. And if your awesome college
education cost you four thousand dollars, that's one thing. But
when it cost you four hundred thousand dollars, you have
to maybe at least consider other alternatives. Yeah, and yeah,
I do love too that Ryan pointed out, Hey, guess what,
there's a long list of potential apprenticeships you could pursue
(45:48):
in his book, which is definitely worth the read.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Heck, yeah, is that your big takeaway? Or you still thinking,
so I got one? You go, you start Okay, so
my big takeaway is just as individuals the benefit of
something like an appent I love how he pointed out
that we will then be able to become informed consumers
of higher education, which I love and like that just
resonates so much with how I view the world as
(46:10):
well as far as like I want my kids, And
I've even said this very statement before. I might change
my mind a decade down the road, but I truly
do think I want my kids to take a gap
year because you just learn so much by being out
in the world and not just being immediately shunted pushed
along the education track. And that's so in the status
that he pointed to at the early on point to
(46:32):
that fact, right that the like we're number one and
the number of students that make it into college as
far as the immediate accessibility of it, but we're like
dead last when it comes to actual completion, which tells
me that there are all the incentives in the world
to get kids in college, but it doesn't necessarily mean
it's the best thing for all of those two it's
a leahyesive, you know, yeah, I completely agree. And the
options that become available when you consider something like an apprenticeship.
(46:55):
I think are are so incredible, And the analogy I
immediately thought of. I thought about mentioning it in the moment,
but he said, other than a house, this is the
most expensive decision that you'd make. And I mean it
made me immediately think of like a couple or an
individual who whatever moving to a new city and immediately
buying a house without doing any due diligence and just
being like, all right, well, I got to pick a neighborhood.
I don't know, I've heard something about this, so I'm
(47:15):
just going to go do that. That is not how
you go about buying a home. You you rent for
a couple of years, you get a feel for the neighborhood.
You are able to do your due diligence, and I
think that's one of the things that in an apprenticeship
allows you to do. Just like you would take your
time in buying a home, I think we should also
take our time when it comes to committing to a
path of education and what it is that high school
(47:37):
grads in particular went to study.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, I think the gap year might not even change
the course you ought to take, but it gives you
maybe more courage and belief of the direction you're going in,
and it might change things up to you a little
bit and might say like, wait a second, no, no,
I do want to go in this other path instead.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
And I was going to go to college. Oh my gosh,
that's not right for me. It's bride as your horizons though, Yeah,
Like I feel like they at least thought them for you. Yes,
I think the apprenticeship gives you experience right on the
job as you are learning about something. I think what
a gap year does is that it broadens your horizons
and it helps you to think through the many different
options and whether or not this is something you want
to do at all, and it just helps you to
see what else is out there.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
And you mentioned I think the quote that I was
going to call out to the same thing well when
he said become an informed consumer of post secondary education.
And I think that ultimately at the it's not to
say apprenticeships are for everyone, colleges for everyone. The truth
is there is a broad spectrum of options that you
can take, and we have boiled it down to one
thing and made it sound like that's the right choice
for ninety nine percent of folks and the truth is
(48:32):
it's not. It is, especially given the high costs of
college today. So the best thing you can do is
not make a knee jerk decision just based on this conversation.
It's just more information to help you be an informed
consumer and know what your options are. That's every time
we talk about college, Matt with with whoever we bring
on the show, whether we're conversations with with and Garcia
(48:53):
who talks about reducing the cost of college and trying
to get all the scholarships available to you, right, all
these conversations we have on the show, it's all about
helping you make an informed decision. It's not saying this
is the right path for you. We don't know who
you are or what you want out of life. And
I just I think the more options to better and
that's why we as a country should do a better
job making apprenticeships available.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
To more and more folks. Yeah, we just want you
to hit pause and not mindlessly consume whether that's the
next thing that's that found its way in your Amazon
car or something that is incredibly expensive, like a higher education.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I'm going to go to the nicest college, the best
college as rated by US News and World Report, which
is dumb. Anyway, I'm going to go there because they
accepted me. Well, how much is it going to cost?
And what's what are you going to major in? And
what are you going to do with that degree at
the end of the day. I mean, those are all
really important questions. And yeah, I think that's that's part
of the problem is people just go to the college
of their dreams and then they graduate four years or
(49:46):
sometimes six or seven years later, or sometimes they don't
graduate at all, and yeah, they're left in actually sometimes
a worse spot because of it.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
All Right, our beer that you and I enjoyed during
this episode was an Adjustable Rate, which is quite When
I saw this one, I was like, I gotta pick
this one because it's not often that beers are named
after financial term that we talk about on the podcast,
but this is another beer by Inner Voice Brewing.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
What were your thoughts, Well, one, I'm curious why they
gave it this name adjustable Rate.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah, no, I guess they're just well it says it's
in collaboration with Magnanimous Brewing. Okay, maybe they do more
stuff like that. I could never It doesn't seem like
it's necessarily within their branding as much. They're more like,
you know, it's inner voice, it's more contemplative memory farm, right, like.
So that's one of their beers that we had on recently.
(50:33):
But I really like this one.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
I mean, I like a good barley wine. This was
sweeter than your average barley wine. I think it was
the orange peel and vanilla combo that led it to
being just like less abrasive or.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
The overall weight of this beer that it's just a beast.
It's a beast of a beer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
I like the balance of this one struck too, because
I think sometimes barley wines can be too heavy, and yeah,
this is a big beer, but I think some of
that sweetness coming from some of the adjuncts that they
put in makes it more approachable.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
There's almost like a tartness like sharpness that comes from
the specifically the orange as well, because without I don't know,
it's I think in the same way that sometimes you
add like you get the faint Do you ever get
the fancier chocolates from Trader Joe's or Aldi or whatever?
You know, it's like, but it's also like with bits
of orange or whatever, like orange is typically something that
you include in chocolate, and I think in part it's
(51:19):
because it's it's to kind of be a foil to
the sweet softness of the chocolate, where this is just
like this little sharp zest and I don't know, I'm
picking up on the zestiness of the orange. I feel
like without the orange in this, it might be just
as sweet, but it would be not as well balanced.
That's a good point in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
No, I think you're right. I think the orange adds
a lot to the roundness of the of the flavor
and just yeah, makes it a multi pronged mouth attack.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, exactly. It looks like it looks like they bred
this for their second anniversary summit. I don't know what
that looked like when they all got together, But in quotes,
it says too big to fail, which is another financial term,
doesn't referring to the banks back during the Great Recession.
These guys make good beers. I love it. It makes me
want to check out around Magnanimous because maybe they're are
(52:05):
they're broom beers that are super financial, wonky nerdy that
we might be into rhythm with literal dollar bills or
pennies in there. Yeah, but yeah, this is a great
conversation with Ryan Craig and we'll make sure to link
to his book the article as well that we referenced,
and you can find that all on the website at
how tomoney dot com, no doubt. All right, buddy, Until
next time, best friends out and best friends out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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