We need a great deal more of this:
Entering 2025, community colleges are expanding apprenticeships and other experienced-based learning programs to address America’s labor shortage crisis and meet a growing demand for alternative forms of higher education.
“Community colleges are going beyond their traditional role of instruction, helping to organize, register, and assist companies in running their apprenticeship programs,” John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, told The College Fix.
“By expanding these services, they reduce barriers for employers to offer apprenticeships,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month.
A recent report by Colborn’s organization shows the number of community colleges with active apprenticeships has grown from just 30 to over 200 between 2016 and 2023.
I’d be happier if it was two thousand community colleges, but I’ll take what I can get.
Seriously: considering how colleges’ traditional educational courses have been debased into (essentially) Marxist wokism, there is a profound rationale for colleges, especially community colleges, to start turning some of their classrooms into workshops.
And I don’t even want to hear that government (of any kind) needs to get involved in this initiative, for any reason. No; this belongs entirely in the purview of businesses who would benefit from having a ready pool of trained workers in their trades, as opposed to the usual escapees from the grease pit at JiffyLube, no-hoper high school “graduates” or illegal immigrants.
There are not many instances where I’d want to copy the Germans, on anything; but I’ve always been a huge fan of their clinical observation — that not everyone should go to college, but an awful lot of the people left over would benefit greatly from trade schools — and it deserves comprehensive implementation on this side of The Pond.
Honestly, nobody loses in this operation; not the workers, nor the companies and especially not the colleges who participate.
Having said that: so beneficial an opportunity is bound to fail, because OMG every child is special and shouldn’t have to get their precious little hands soiled by working at Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs (or Victor Davis Hanson’s “Muscular Jobs”, if you prefer).
Fach.
I’m a product of a trade school, started when I was 15 yo in 1970. 2 year course taken WHILE I was in high school and after 18 months it got me my first job in the business.
So, in summation, in Jan 1972 at age 16 I completed my trade school obligations to the point they found me worthy of job placement, and today I turn 70 years old and I am still working full time in that trade. That’s 53 years doing something every day that I truly enjoy.
Looking back, I have no idea what else I would be doing right now if not for that trade school opportunity. For me it was a life shaper.
Happy birthday, y’old fart.
Thanks! I’m catchin’ up with ya!
Happy Birthday Ghost. This website wouldn’t be here without Kim and the comments wouldn’t be as good without you.
happy birthday!!
Mike Rowe provides a video about training for jobs that provides a very good pay, as soon as you graduate. I was unaware that this existed, but think we need more training like this, as opposed to a degree in basket weaving.
Mott Community College, Regional Technology Center (RTC) in Flint, Michigan. Has a well known Automotive Mechanics school. As part of the Program hey also host the Factory 5 Build School. If you buy one of Factory 5 cobra kits you can sign up to attend the Build School and Participate in the 3 day program where you build a complete running cobra starting from an as delivered Kit.
https://www.factoryfive.com/build-school/
One thing to mention on the German model. It isn’t do or die like in some countries that do similar dual paths. So if a kid doesn’t do well on their first shot at test for Gymnasium (their prep school path) then they can take another shot if they want and a lot has to do with their academic record up until then. Even if they go the trade school routes, there are paths to university later.
That said, there are some positive points about our university system we do not want to mess up (obviously not the woke side). The biggest problem is when we decided to shove kids into it who had no business going that path.
Apprenticeship programs are absolutely great. Have high school kids job shadow people for a couple of weeks in various jobs so that kids choose the right job for them.
Also, apprenticeship programs teach from a different perspective than school lectures and laboratory work. Maybe that will appeal to people with a different learning style
Around these parts, pretty much every trade union has an apprenticeship program, where they will train youngsters in everything from plumbing to painting, electrical installation to heavy equipment operation. You can sign up while still in high school, learn after school and on weekends, work on the jobsite during breaks and over the summer, and get paid for it! No student loans, none of that b.s. And you finish with a skill that will provide a fine paycheck over the years that will support your family and grow your future.
Sadly, so many youngsters today seem to have an aversion to breaking a sweat or getting dirty. They’d rather be saddled with a life-long debt just so they can have a diploma to hang on their wall.
I’d rather have a union card.
IDK – atheist the ones I am familiar with, if you don’t have connections with the union, you don’t get it. (As example, that is why my one cousin is a carpenter and not an electrician even though he was an electrician in the Army. He had no connections to get in the electricians union but we had family in the carpenter union, so they they took him).
In other words, they are corrupt.
More indeed. While I did not wind up in the trades, in 1973 at Sierra JC I took an engine rebuild class as an elective. Still have the text book–
https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Electrical-Systems-Blanchard-Ritchen/dp/B000O6EBAK?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=0&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xktBQ8inmmlXa8L7lw_NXIlEFE74VmsCp0GpJdvIoiVLnRh9CwUYamdAT1v3rDvXoQvMufFsHTLC-S9BqceA00e1gIj2zHj56_GA8J6-_R0nzKgN4F_JP8VYG6z0jrOw4ew80IZaX6eRtLnMMl14zg.9Nbr4fAlvKEG_jVHtcHPDE97HF9xsBw7flfYYp5LtMo&dib_tag=se&qid=1738339467&refinements=p_28%3Aauto+engines+and+electrical+systems&s=books&sr=1-1&unfiltered=1
Even on the academic side of things, the courses I took at the local community college tended to be of much better quality than those at the state flagship university.
That they were taught by people who actually wanted to teach rather than by TAs or profs who were merely doing it to get their money to cover their tuition and/or research might have had something to do with it.
So, even for folks wanting to go the academic route, I’d always recommend doing the first two years at the local CC to get the core stuff done. Better quality at a *much* better price.
That’s what our family did, LG: the so-called “core” courses at the community college, and the final undergrad ones at a 4-year college — or, as we called it, the two-year college. (In my case, it was an 18-month college.)
All over Australia in almost every country town you can still see buildings called “Mechanics Institute” or “Technical School”, funded, staffed and run by local communities to share knowledge and skills. In many cases it didn’t come with a formal qualification, you just got a letter from the principle stating that you had been trained in welding or servicing a diesel engine or some other useful skill to use back on the farm.
Of course, the government “fixed” this model back in the 1950s.
My 1st daughter (born in Cambodia) spent 2 years as an apprentice gardener in Kyoto, Japan AFTER she finished her undergraduate degree at University of San Diego in Cinematic Arts and Film Studies (Film Archiving). She suffered a near fatal lung illness from contaminated film whilst working in Australia (old bird shit on old film canisters) and barely survived. After recovery, she went to Japan to be a gardener and then came back to work at San Diego Botanic Garden for a couple of years, then got a job in Vancouver developing a greenhouse for specialty plants. She married a fella from Australia and then spent a couple of years over there doing the same. Now they live in DFW and she makes stupid money making and maintaining indoor Japanese gardens in North Central Texas.
My 2nd daughter (mixed race born in Haiti) went to the North Bennet St. School in Boston to become a bookbinder. I am pleased to admit that I was the force behind that. She is a solitary, introverted girl who doesn’t do well with conflict or interpersonal drama and this is her dream job. She worked for several years as a rare book archivist and restoration technician for several universities and now has a full-time job working for a lab that does reconstruction/repair of rare books, documents and textiles. She is a leading expert on bindery, glue, and ink and dye chemistry for books prior to the 1700’s.
They both learned from masters, not professors. Had I been so lucky.
Here in the UK we have what are called Degree Apprenticeships. These are much sought-after.