Why Are Politicians Talking About Apprenticeships?

During a presidential election cycle that’s involved little talk of higher ed, apprenticeships have claimed an unusual share of the spotlight.

Vice President Kamala Harris recently posted on X that she plans to double the number of registered, or federally recognized, apprenticeships, if she is elected president. The Democratic nominee also told a crowd at a September rally in Pennsylvania that “our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs.”

The 2024 Democratic Party platform, meanwhile, boasts “record investments” in registered apprenticeships under the Biden administration, with a million trainees participating in them as a result. “That’s a path to the middle class that families can count on,” the platform reads.

Republicans are also bringing apprenticeships to the fore. These programs make a notable appearance in Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for a second Trump administration from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The plan calls for a return to a prior Trump administration policy to have a system of industry-recognized apprenticeships, separate from registered apprenticeships, to skirt what Republicans view as too much federal regulation. Registered apprenticeships have to meet certain quality standards in order to be eligible for federal money.

Heritage president Kevin Roberts wrote in the blueprint’s foreword that apprenticeships are an educational alternative to the “woke-dominated system of public schools and universities.”

So, apprenticeships are clearly on the minds of politicians and thought leaders this election season. But what are they, exactly? Why is everybody talking about them? And what does their current place in the national discourse mean for higher ed?

Read on.

How Do Apprenticeships Work?

Apprenticeships are on-the-job training programs where trainees are working under the auspices of a mentor in their field and include classroom-based instruction. These programs are often in trades like construction, carpentry and plumbing but also exist in other fields like health care.

The expectation built into these programs is that people are hired as trainees and have permanent jobs waiting for them on the other side of their apprenticeship. Apprentices are paid, starting at lower wages than full employees, but their compensation ramps up as they gain new skills.

“Apprenticeships are the gold standard of workforce education— always have been and likely always will be,” said Shalin Jyotishi, founder and managing director of the Future of Work & Innovation Economy Initiative at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “And the reason for that is because it’s the closest possible link between the educational experience and the employers in the work environment.”

There are different “flavors” of apprenticeships, said John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, a nonprofit seeking to expand apprenticeships in the United States. Some apprenticeship programs are sponsored by individual employers, while others stem from partnerships between employers and unions, among other kinds of arrangements. Community colleges and other higher ed institutions can also offer college credit for apprenticeships or sponsor apprenticeships by partnering with employers and overseeing the work-based learning and instruction apprentices receive.

The U.S. Department of Labor gives its stamp of approval to some apprenticeships, which are considered registered and have to meet quality standards, though the process can vary by state. In 2022, there were nearly 27,000 registered apprenticeship programs, serving almost 600,000 apprentices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unregistered apprenticeships, in contrast, have not gone through that process to prove they meet those standards.

Is Apprenticeship a Bipartisan Issue?

Mostly.

Over all, Democrats and Republicans agree apprenticeships are a smart investment.

“Democrat, Republican—there’s a lot of interest in this idea,” Colborn said. He described apprenticeships receiving a “steadily increasing level of attention” under the last three presidential administrations.

“But because we are who we are as a country and where we are politically, we have to find things we’re going to fight about,” Colborn quipped.

The dividing line is often the registration process. Republicans generally view the process as too slow and arduous to be functional. Democrats see Republicans as trying to stand up programs without proper quality assurances to protect trainees.

Those tensions are playing out in the current election cycle.

The Democratic National Committee, for example, put out a notice last month accusing Project 2025 of “attacks” on apprenticeship.

The post describes the Heritage Foundation’s proposal to revive Trump’s industry-recognized apprenticeships system as “anti-worker” and giving “big corporations the power to exploit American workers and prioritize big business over everyday Americans.”

Jason L. Riley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, criticized Harris’s plan to expand registered apprenticeships in a Wall Street Journal column. He claimed registered apprenticeships are too often “managed by labor unions, which aren’t in the business of cutting red tape.” (He also critiqued Trump for not emphasizing apprenticeships enough this election cycle.)

Expanding apprenticeships is an idea “many Republicans support,” Riley wrote. “A four-year college degree isn’t for everyone and shouldn’t be the only path to a middle-class life,” but Harris “isn’t in favor of expanding all apprenticeships.”

OK, but Why Is Everyone Talking About Them Now?

All this talk about apprenticeships on the national stage comes at a time when Americans are increasingly questioning the value of traditional degree programs. Politicians are tapping into that growing sentiment.

In general, “in the national discourse and presidential race, you’ve seen a shift in the conversation” to the idea “that a college degree is not the only pathway to a good-paying job” and “it might not be the right fit for everyone,” said Curran McSwigan, senior economic policy adviser at Third Way, a center-left think tank. There’s been some movement away from degrees and toward skills-based hiring practices, including at least 16 states that no longer require a degree for most state jobs. She sees today’s discourse on apprenticeships as a part of that larger shift.

Harris’s promise to double the number of registered apprenticeships shows she “understands that there are a lot of people who feel like they want to be able to achieve economic and financial security and maybe are unsure on kind of the pathways that are available to them,” McSwigan added.

Colborn agreed that national discussions about apprenticeship are driven by a “very bipartisan re-examination” of how Americans train for careers and the limits of the “college for all” public policy approach.

Against that backdrop, apprenticeships come off as a pretty sweet deal to learners—and voters—leery of student loan debt and interested in alternative job training options, Jyotishi said.

“You’re paid to go through an apprenticeship program,” he noted. “You’re employed. You have an employer record … You avoid debt … There’s an appetite for apprenticeships, because apprenticeships work really well.”

What Does All This Mean for Higher Ed?

The national spotlight on apprenticeship programs suggests these programs are going to enjoy more support in the future, whoever becomes the next president. Higher ed and workforce experts say colleges and universities should see it as an opportunity to get more involved in the apprenticeship system rather than as a competitor.

Jyotishi said he’d like to see more colleges serve as apprenticeship sponsors.

“I think some colleges can reel and recoil when they hear ‘alternatives’ and ‘nondegree pathways,’” he said. But “they too can be part of those alternatives. In many ways, they have,” he said, noting many already offer certificate programs and other kinds of alternative options.

Apprenticeships at higher ed institutions remain relatively uncommon. A new report from Apprenticeships for America found that 541 community and technical colleges were registered apprenticeship sponsors as of 2023, but only 208 of these institutions actually have an active apprentice. Apprentices in these programs, about 15,500 trainees, represent only about 3 percent of apprentices over all.

“We’ve seen pretty significant growth of community colleges as apprenticeship sponsors,” Colborn said. “We still have a long ways to go before we’re seeing real scale there.”

There are also degree apprenticeships, which award college credit for apprenticeship programs so trainees can build toward degrees. This model is rare in the U.S. but picking up steam. Tennessee’s education department started the first registered teaching apprenticeship program in the country two years ago, allowing people to earn degrees while getting paid to train in classrooms.

“A lot of times, there can be this perception that it’s higher ed or apprenticeships,” McSwigan said. “I think that there’s this room as well for higher ed and the apprenticeship system to work together to support workers, as opposed to being an either-or decision.”

(This article has been updated to correct Shalin Jyotishi's title at New America.)