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Over dinner one evening last week, my 14-year-old son Zev reminded me how, a few years ago, our neighbor’s dog got out of his house, lost his bearings, and somehow wandered all the way downtown. Since downtown is nearly 20 miles away, when the dog – thankfully, miraculously – was found and returned safely, he was exhausted. Because I’d just been talking with Zev about the kinds of problem-solving questions companies ask in college recruiting – sadly, sadistically, sometimes I bring my work home – I spied what I thought was a teachable moment:
Me: Zev, how many streets do you think the dog had to cross?
Zev: To get where?
Me: Downtown. Let’s say the Staples Center [where the Lakers and Kings play].
Zev: From where?
Me: From our neighbor’s house.
Zev: OK. And what time of day was it?
Me: [Pause…] I’m stopping the interview right here.
Stopping the mock interview was a good idea. First, because Zev is a smartass. Second, because college recruiting is unlikely to look like this when – God help us – Zev’s ready for full-time employment.
We were reminded of this last Wednesday when President Trump issued a flurry of executive orders relating to education and workforce development. Most continued the administration’s predictable attacks on traditional higher education, one related to AI, and one to apprenticeship. Together, they tell us where the puck is going in education and workforce, at least for the next three and a half years.
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The fact sheet accompanying the apprenticeship order rings a bell: “Decades of failed political leadership have left America with a one-size-fits-all approach to workforce preparedness, which previous Administrations promoted as ‘college for all.’” The fact sheet then complains about the wild divergence between federal funding for college and the paltry sums spent on workforce development, only a fraction of which is invested in apprenticeship.
President Trump’s apprenticeship order produced the toadying we’ve come to expect from this administration. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer issued a press release full of Trump Restoration bromides: “This decisive action is yet another example of President Trump keeping his promise to American workers… Under President Trump’s leadership, we are renewing the American Dream…” We can be grateful it wasn’t as bad as the exhaust from President Trump’s visit to the Kennedy Center in March where he talked about his “high aptitude for music,” prompting MAGA’s favorite country artist Lee Greenwood to comment “he’s absolutely very creative and very artistic. I do not doubt that he has a great ear for music,” and White House communications director Steven Cheung to jump the shark by calling the president “ a virtuoso and his musical choices represent a brilliant palette of vibrant colors when others often paint in pale pastels.”
This high bar provides me with cover to paint in pale pastels and toady a tiny bit. Because both the apprenticeship and AI executive orders mark important firsts for those of us who believe it’s critical that America build earn-and-learn pathways across the economy.
The apprenticeship order sets a federal goal of “1 million active apprentices, including avenues for expansion to new industries and occupations.” New industries and occupations are exactly what’s needed: risk-free pathways to the good jobs of the 21st century. But a goal of 1 million? While a million may sound like a lot, there are already 680K registered apprentices in the U.S. So while not an ambitious goal – certainly not in comparison with the performance of most other developed countries, which, on an apprentice per capita basis, do an order of magnitude better – it marks the first time an administration has set an actual goal rather than simply continuing to shell out apprenticeship dollars to workforce boards and community colleges hoping for something good to come of it.
Equally important, there’s a roadmap for how we’ll get to 1M and beyond. The order directs departments to “consolidate and streamline fragmented Federal workforce development programs that are too disconnected from propelling workers into secure, well-paying, and high-need American jobs” and to identify “workforce development and education programs… that are ineffective or otherwise fail to achieve their desired outcomes.”
This is essential. As I
wrote seven years ago:
What is workforce development? It’s a fragmented system of state and local workforce development or investment boards. These organizations are responsible for spending federal and state workforce dollars on “one stop” career centers to help job seekers find jobs. Charged with human capital development, WIBs maintain long laundry lists of training programs operated by nonprofit organizations and community colleges, and also provide access to an alphabet soup of public programs e.g., HUD Employment and Training Programs, Job Corps, Local Veterans’ Employment Representatives and Disabled Veterans’ Outreach Program, National Farmworker Jobs Program, and Senior Community Service Employment Program.
While some of these programs are effective at putting people in jobs, they’re wholly ineffective in putting people in good jobs. And because they’re either speed-to-placement in bad jobs or training programs with few employer and employment connections, none claim strong career launch or economic mobility outcomes. In contrast, registered apprenticeships are good jobs with clear career paths, the polar opposite of current workforce training programs. This explains why the administration’s accompanying fact sheet bemoans the $4.1B spent each year on workforce development and $1.4B on career and technical education while “neither of these programs are structured to promote apprenticeships” and why the order directs departments to eliminate or redirect the funding of ineffective programs.
With last week’s DOGE-ing of the $1.3B AmeriCorps program, the redirecting of funding has commenced. And while no one should celebrate the destruction of programs or elimination of workforce development jobs, shifting billions of dollars to a proven pathway for economic mobility can do a lot of good. Bob Lerman, my co-founder at Apprenticeships for America, has a strategy for scaling apprenticeships, not only to President Trump’s 1 million goal, but to approach the likes of the UK, France, and Australia. Bob estimates that a new pay-for-performance system for apprenticeships – where employers, sponsors, or intermediaries receive $5K in federal support for every apprentice hired and trained – could get us to 2 million apprentices (and 1 million apprentice hires per year, theoretically providing earn-and-learn pathways for a third of high school grads) for $5B per year, or about the level of funding this administration could conceivably reallocate. In other words, there’s already enough money in the system to do a lot of good.
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There are more glad tidings in last week’s executive orders. By emphasizing registered apprenticeships, President Trump has given up the ghost of the so-called “industry-recognized apprenticeships” or IRAPs that were a distraction and dead-end in his first term. Second, the AI executive order correctly calls out the importance of apprenticeship intermediaries and suggests allocating funding to intermediaries “to engage industry organizations and employers and facilitate the development of Registered Apprenticeship programs in AI-related occupations.” Third, the AI order suggests developing federal program standards for apprenticeships – a decades-long deficit that has distinguished and hobbled American apprenticeships – “enabling individual employers to adopt the standards without requiring individual registry.” This last point suggests the administration is aware of the heavy burden of registration, in stark contrast to the Biden administration which sought to add dozens of additional and unnecessary regulatory requirements. So look for further action on rationalizing registration for the tech, healthcare, and financial services apprenticeships that don’t require safety protocols appropriate for the building trades.
Whether 2025 proves to be an annus mirabilis for apprenticeship now depends on Congress. The executive orders and funding cuts throw down the gauntlet to an institution that been woefully out of step. To wit, in March Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced the same “American Apprenticeships Act” she’s been pushing every session for nearly a decade. The bipartisan legislation, this time co-sponsored with Senator Susan Collins, would provide competitive grants to states and make other changes that shouldn’t be on anyone’s top 10 list for apprenticeship growth. In the House, serial efforts to amend the National Apprenticeship Act have focused on issues unrelated to scaling apprenticeship infrastructure and convincing employers to hire apprentices e.g., requiring the Department of Labor to enter into agreement with the Department of Education to promote alignment, integration, and data sharing of apprenticeship programs with colleges and school districts.
In my interactions with members of Congress, these misaligned priorities appear to be a function of lack of understanding as well as conflation with train-and-pray workforce development. On several occasions, representatives have responded to questions or comments on apprenticeship with stories of someone they met who was helped by a workforce training program. They don’t understand the distinction between training programs vs. earn-and-learn jobs. So apprenticeship might be the only area where we’d be better off if the legislative branch fell in line with the priorities set by the executive.
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When Apprentice Nation was published 18 months ago, I never thought things would move this quickly. But in that short period, we have seen:
1) Major progress in
California,
Colorado,
Indiana, and
Maryland.
2) An
executive order from the Biden administration seeking to expand apprenticeships across federal agencies, contractors, and grantees.
3) Language in a 2024 funding bill instructing the Department of Labor to evaluate shifting from grant-based funding to pay-for-performance.
4) The Biden administration, in its waning days,
reluctantly acknowledging that, yes, we should look at shifting the way we fund apprenticeships.
5) Last week’s executive orders.
The arguments for apprenticeship are many: equity (earn-and-learn pathways are accessible to everyone, regardless of background or resources); employment (apprenticeships uniquely close the skill and experience gaps); and because the earn-and-learn infrastructure that will emerge from investing in apprenticeship will support the full spectrum of work-based learning that college graduates will need if they want to get good first jobs in the age of AI.
Then there’s balance. More than any other country, we’ve gone all-in on classroom-based, tuition-based, debt-based career launch infrastructure while dramatically underinvesting in earn-and-learn pathways. We’ve unfairly discriminated against young adults uninterested in or unable to sit in classrooms and pay tuition. And while organizing apprenticeships and involving employers from the start are harder than just shoving students in a classroom, unless we do the work, things aren't going to get better.
America’s imbalanced approach to career launch is like my neighbor’s lost dog who got out of his house, lost his bearings, and somehow wandered all the way downtown. The dog is now exhausted and it’s time to bring him back home safely. The new administration’s view seems to be, let’s do it now. As I told Zev, it shouldn’t matter what time of day it is.
Once we establish paid pathways to careers across the economy, no one should feel the need to protest the status quo by voting for a “virtuoso.” In fact, if President Trump is a virtuoso, it’s by accident. Because by addressing the economic mobility frustrations that gave birth to the MAGA movement, President Trump’s apprenticeship policies may very well put him and his followers out of the executive order business.
Yes, a broken clock is right twice a day. A big, beautiful, golden, broken clock.