Apprenticeships: Useful Alternative, Tough to Implement

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/apprenticeships-useful-alternative-tough-implement

24 49 10 years ago

cmdrfred3• 10 years ago

"Any American-style apprenticeship model will need to deal effectively with the age-old problem of the “runaway apprentice” — the apprentice who leaves his employer after the employer has invested time and energy in training him, but before the apprentice has been useful enough to make the employer’s investment worthwhile."

How is it that they are skilled enough to be useful at one employer but not the other?

snrplfth12• 10 years ago

The point is that they are useful at multiple employers. An employer, when training an apprentice, incurs a cost in doing so, but cannot be sure that they'll be able to recoup the cost if the apprentice leaves soon after finishing training.

cloudwizard• 10 years ago

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-academy-pay-20...

Many small cities do not have police academies. They just hire the graduates from other cities. This is similar to the problem of apprentices leaving.

cmdrfred3• 10 years ago

That's a tricky line to tread when you think about it. Who decides when the employer has met his costs?

nik7362• 10 years ago

What's the point of this article? There is no real problem I can see. I made an apprenticeship in Germany and for most jobs you have to work 3 years to get it done. 3 years is plenty of time to make money out of the apprentice, even if he/she is underperforming. Most apprenticeships only pay around 500-800 bucks a month, so even if you have a bad apprentice you can still let him/her do unthankful jobs and he is worth it.

Also, the apprentice is teached on the job which is a huge benefit, since it's a real environment. Every day you learn things and how they are done in the real world.

snrplfth12• 10 years ago

Paying that little is generally illegal in the USA. At minimum wage, a worker working 37.5 hours a week will earn $1087 a month. If they're underperforming that price, it doesn't make sense to hire them.

baraah• 10 years ago

Apprentices in Germany spend part of their work week in school. The €500-800 aren't really for 37.5 hour weeks.

Apprentices are however exempted from the minimum wage.

TheSpiceIsLife• 10 years ago

I'm not sure about the USA, but here in Australia apprentices pay rates are different from the adult minimum wage rate.

The current national minimum wage in Australia is $17.70 per hour[1], where as the 1st year apprentices in our metal fabircation workshop are on something like $12 an hour, the minimum is $10.31 for a first year in our trade. If the apprentice is over 21 they rates are different again. Apprentice pay rates increase each year.

Edit: as a sibiling comment mentioned, apprentices in Australia spend part of their work-year in school. This can either be weekly, or more typically in one or two week blocks.

Also, I should add: at least half of the 1st year apprentices I've worked with are useless for about the first six months, they're a massive time sink if they're not doing something completely repetative like cutting a thousand pieces of steel the same length, and then they'll still find a way fuck that up if you don't keep a close eye on them.

1. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/how-we-will-help/templates-and-g...

nik7362• 10 years ago

We have minimum wage as well and they are simply excluded from that. Problem, where? You pay a shitload of money to study, while you actually get paid doing your apprenticeship. It's a win-win.

lima2• 10 years ago

Germany has a minimum wage, too, and apprenticeships are exempt :-)

Extra incentive.

nickthemagicman3• 10 years ago

This. The article presents a false dichotomy that the apprentice stays or it's not worth teaching them.

Most apprenticeships allow the apprentice to do lower tier work and work their way up which still allows for the apprentice to produce value. Combine this with a lower pay and there's no loss to the company if done right.

It works like that in the tech industry all the time starting at desktop support or even office clerk and working their way up.

The problem is...no one is willing to be a mentor or train anymore for whatever reason.

dozzie• 10 years ago

I made an apprenticeship in Germany and for most jobs you have to work 3 years to get it done. 3 years is plenty of time to make money out of the apprentice, even if he/she is underperforming.

Paul Sellers, who is a craftsman for fifty years already, disagrees that it's plenty of time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O0Q9wJPkBw (the question starts at 12:55, and two important and relevant points are at 16:10 and at 18:00).

To sum up, an apprentice not only underperforms initially, but also lowers their master's effectiveness. It takes quite long time for an apprentice to pick up enough trade to be of any use without dragging down the master, and this is as true for woodwork as for programming or systems/networks administration. It's only fair that the apprentice serves somewhat longer than it takes to just learn the craft.

Though I agree that for IT apprenticeship is probably the most sensible way to train staff.

awinter-py2• 10 years ago

I taught after-school programming in a large city and got the opportunity to ask a lot of ed insiders why they don't teach more 'skills' rather than 'subjects'.

People usually answered 'we don't want to sacrifice general problem solving skills'. (This is what I would say if I were getting paid to do something with no measurable output). Some said 'Vocational school is perceived as not getting you into college', which is true but bad.

The missing third answer is 'there's no system for bringing people with fresh job skills into schools'.

There's a great atlantic article about swimming lessons vs math lessons that said 'at the end of the exercise if you can't swim something is wrong'. The bulk of education by $ value in the US doesn't have a deliverable. (Not so for sports and music).

I've seen research which claims that parental involvement is a significant factor in the quality of public schools (though this is hard to separate from real estate prices or any other proxy for wealth/education). Maybe the right way to add a 'deliverable' to education is to treat parents as the consumer instead of students or testing authorities.

jawns• 10 years ago

Yet general problem solving skills are extremely important (which is why a lot of employers test for them during the interview).

And the nice thing about them is that if you're a good problem solver, you can apply that to a lot of different careers. Whereas teaching a specific set of skills (e.g. pipe welding) may make you a great pipe welder, but guess what happens when you decide to change careers.

So I'd characterize the trade-off as:

- Focusing on general problem solving skills (assuming they can be taught) opens a lot of doors, but doesn't get you very far inside any one door.

- Focusing on trade skills opens a far more limited set of doors, but can get you farther inside the door you choose to enter.

What makes the trade-off extra tricky is that it's possible general problem solving skills cannot be taught, in the same way a high IQ cannot be taught. And, as you point out, it's much trickier to measure problem solving capacity than it is to measure whether a pipe was welded correctly.

cmdrfred3• 10 years ago

Now the question is does our education system actually help create good problem solvers or would more metrics and accountability for teachers improve matters?

awinter-py2• 10 years ago

General problem-solving happens when you draw from all your skills because you have a problem with no obvious answer. Every new thing you learn adds to your ability to solve 'general problems'. Teaching specific skills doesn't take away from someone's general ability -- it improves it.

Smart people can master skills and information in a hurry, but people are only effective if they've used their time to master a lot of skills. Can we improve G? If yes, you'll still improve someone's general effectiveness more by teaching them lots of skills than by improving their IQ 5 points.

Inconel• 10 years ago

I agree with what you've said but I would add that as someone who works in the trades, and who knows quite a few welders who run the gamut from barely competent to "great", one attribute that all of the ones I would classify as great have in common, in addition to very high technical welding skill, is general problem solving ability.

I think many people, somewhat unfairly, view the path towards gaining trade skills as a case of simply showing up to work or class, going through the motions of practicing your specific skill, and after some period of time you simply become a master at your profession. Now, doing the aforementioned will probably get you to the competent level, but to be great at something like welding requires quite a bit of general problem solving ability in addition technical skill.

This is doubly true for those who end up starting their own businesses. I know a few welders/machinists who are working on their own now. The vast majority don't come from monied backgrounds and have a hard time raising startup capital so they end up doing things on a shoestring budget. The ones I know end up having to become at least mildly knowledgable in accounting, taxes, business regulations and things like fire code and labor laws, business contracts and sometimes even the local commercial/industrial real estate market. They do these things because they don't have the capital to hire others to do them. Despite in most cases having nothing more than a high school diploma, or some community college coursework, I would definitely say they excel at general problem solving.

jaggederest• 10 years ago

I've been seriously considering starting a nonprofit to do something like this.

Many jobs require "two years" of experience, which makes getting a first job a difficult catch 22.

As a non-profit you could reasonably hire and employ these folks to do productive business at below-market rates and be more or less unconcerned with them leaving once they finished.

Anecdotally, I know quite a few people with good skills who are stuck working retail/service jobs, chronically underemployed, because they simply can't get into a position to demonstrate excellence and get the experience to get a job in their trained field. I consider that a waste of human potential, and quite sad.

andrewflnr• 10 years ago

Maybe that's a good model for sponsoring open source apps?

jadell• 10 years ago

I wonder if the answer to the "runaway apprentice" problem is a subsidy of some sort. Give the employer a monthly stipend per apprentice to cover the cost of time, tools, part of the apprentice's wages, and a bit leftover. The employer is incentivized to train the apprentice regardless of whether the apprentice sticks around, because if thee apprentice leaves, they potentially still earned money during the training. And if the apprentice stays, they have a ready-made employee on someone else's dime.

This could be combined with something like a below minimum-wage for apprenticeships, with the reasoning that an apprentice is being paid in both money and in training they would otherwise have to pay for themselves.

beat2• 10 years ago

Apprenticeship is useful mostly for craftsman professions. But craft-driven paths have been hammered relentlessly for over a century by two related forces - the relentless advance of technology, and the Taylorization of jobs from complex work that required skill and experience to documented "scientific management" processes that a monkey can do if it can follow instructions.

In other words, either jobs become dumber, or jobs become obsolete.

I don't know what can be done about either of those forces. This isn't about college, it isn't about some lost art, it isn't about microeconomic market forces. It's about craftsmanship becoming much more rare.

nickthemagicman3• 10 years ago

Wat. Some of the best developers I know learned 'on the job'. Software is a 'craft' after all. I think all of technology is a craft.

lima2• 10 years ago

Not true. You spend three years "on the job", and the result is the same for blue- and white collar work.

Most sysadmins in Germany that I know (some of them the best I ever met) did an apprenticeship.

beat2• 10 years ago

I'm not saying craftsmanship no longer exists. Computer ops in particular is a strong source of craft. But in general, my point holds. Many jobs that once had a strong craft tradition have been rendered obsolete by technological advance, or fragmented into meaninglessness by scientific management principles.

My wife's grandfather has a stunning 19th century grandfather clock. It's made of beautifully carved wood, handmade gears, gorgeous engraving and inlays, the obvious result of hundreds of hours of highly skilled labor. It's huge,and it's not very accurate. Moreover, the fine craftsmanship is nowhere near as precise as a cheap kid's watch today. At this moment, I have three different clocks within reach of my hand. They're all synced to millisecond accuracy against an official atomic clock. They all cost pennies at most, and cannot be made by human hands. There is no point in grandfather clocks today, except as family heirlooms or decoration.

That's what I'm talking about. Jobs like clock-making have been obliterated. Whole industries. Most "jobs" today are either white-collar brain work, or mere cogs in a wheel developed by someone else.

nickthemagicman3• 10 years ago

College is another antiquated system that needs to be burned to the ground by disruptive technology and lime seeded on the earth where it grows.

Most professions used to have ways OUTSIDE of the college track to enter those professions until fairly recently.

There's tons of exceptionally smart people who could study at night and weekends and pass the Bar or the CPA exam but can't afford massive tuition to get the college approved pre-reqs for this.

And there's tons of startups who are frothing at the bit to make amazing online institutions for these people to be successful.

But thanks to regulations, some rich kid whose parents pay the tuition gets that spot because the smart but poor person doesn't have time to attend a 1:00-3:30 class because he has a job.

We complain about the health care lobby, the oil lobby..etc.

In the coming years as the only available jobs will be accessible to people with advanced knowledge and licenses..the higher education lobby is going to be a serious problem.

fatdog• 10 years ago

What is hilarious about "general problem solving skills," is that when you actually master something with instruction, the person who teaches it to you tends to tell you the reason something works in a specific way is because of the general principle at work. Actually doing things gives you general problem solving skills.

A lot of people believe, "everything happens for a reason," but people with practical experience don't need to believe that because they know everything happens for a reason: it's called "the cause."

Apprenticeships are the most valuable education anyone can get, but the practical aspects fly in the face of pseudo-intellectualism that passes for modern non-STEM scholarship.

Jugurtha• 10 years ago

A lot of people believe, "everything happens for a reason," but people with practical experience don't need to believe that because they know everything happens for a reason: it's called "the cause."

Yes. It's all in the formulation. It's not for a reason, but because of a reason.

Using "for" is misleading and puts the horse before the cart: If you went to a café and met the love of your life, it's not "you went to that café for you to meet the love of your life", it's more "you met the love of your life because you went to that café".

I don't exclude the existence of things beyond the limits of my knowledge, though.

Animats3• 10 years ago

So the Cato Institute wants to re-introduce slavery, or at least indentured servitude. Amusingly, the German approach is unacceptable because it involves unions.

The author is Gail Heriot, an academic lawyer who is also on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, appointed by Congress. Strange.

Analemma_• 10 years ago

The Cato Institute has an uncanny ability to take even good ideas and make them horrible.

snrplfth12• 10 years ago

Did you even read the article? From the text:

"It is entirely clear that 21st century Americans have no interest in jailing runaway apprentices. A legislative proposal calling for the arrest and detention of individuals in breach of their apprenticeship contracts would rightly be met with jeers and guffaws."

The big reason they don't like the German approach is because it excludes from the trades those who don't have the "appropriate" licenses. This shuts those of little means out of these jobs. They proposed, as possible solutions, vouchers, loans, and possibly permitting non-compete agreements.

Your accusation of "re-introducing slavery, or at least indentured servitude", is deeply dishonest.

Animats3• 10 years ago

"One partial solution might be to ensure that apprentices can borrow money (e.g., through student loans) to pay for their own instruction or to post a bond that would be forfeited if they left their stand-alone or school-sponsored apprenticeships before their employers had recouped their investment."

That's effectively indentured servitude.

The big difference between union-run apprenticeships and employer-run apprenticeships is that the union represents the employee's interest, not the employer. This results in a much more formal educational arrangement. It's not just "cheap workers with a little training now and then".[1]

[1] http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/article...

Apprenticeships: Useful Alternative, Tough to Implement

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