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"slug": "apprenticeships-are-bringing-new-workers-to-heritage-industries",
"title": "Apprenticeships are Bringing New Workers to Heritage Industries",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/apprenticeships-are-bringing-new-workers-to-heritage-industries\">\u003cem>learning on the job\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/highereducation/\">\u003cem>the Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SHINGLETOWN, Calif. — On a cold morning in October, the sun shone weakly through tall sugar pines and cedars in Shingletown, a small Northern California outpost whose name is a reminder of its history as a logging camp in the 1800s. Up a gravel road banked with iron-rich red soil, Dylan Knight took a break from stacking logs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knight is one of 10 student loggers at Shasta College training to operate the heavy equipment required for modern-day logging: processors to remove limbs from logs that have just been cut, skidders to pull logs out of the cutting site, loaders to stack and sort the logs by species and masticators to mulch up debris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For centuries, logging was a seasonal, learn-on-the-job trade passed down from father to son. But as climate change and innovations in the industry have changed logging into a year-round business, there aren’t always enough workers to fill jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our workforce was dying,” said Delbert Gannon, owner of Creekside Logging. “You couldn’t even pick from the bottom of the barrel. It was affecting our production and our ability to haul logs. We felt we had to do something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the country, community colleges are stepping in to run apprenticeship programs for heritage industries, such as logging and aquaculture, which are too small to run. These partnerships help colleges expand the workforce development programs central to their mission. The partnerships also help keep small businesses in small industries alive by managing state and federal grants and providing the equipment, courses and staff to train workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As industries go, logging is small, and it’s struggling. In 2023 there were only \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/logging-workers.htm\">about 50,000 logging jobs\u003c/a> in the U.S., but the number of logging companies has been \u003ca href=\"https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ENUUS000205113?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true\">on the decline\u003c/a> for several years. \u003ca href=\"https://forestresources.org/2024/08/08/why-we-still-need-to-worry-about-the-logging-sector/\">Most loggers are over 50\u003c/a>, according to industry data, and older generations are retiring, contributing to more than 6,000 vacant positions every year on average. The median \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/logging-workers.htm\">annual salary\u003c/a> for loggers is about $50,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65345\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65345\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person with helmet covered with stickers\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1801\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-800x563.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-1020x718.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-160x113.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-768x540.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-1536x1081.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-2048x1441.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-1920x1351.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Talon Gramps-Green shows stickers on his helmet at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Retirements have hit Creekside Logging hard. In 2018 Gannon’s company had jobs to do, and the machines to do them, but nobody to do the work. He reached out to Shasta College, which offers certificates and degrees in forestry and heavy equipment operation, to see if there might be a student who could help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That conversation led to a formal partnership between the college and 19 timber companies to create a pre-apprenticeship course in \u003ca href=\"https://www.shastacollege.edu/academics/programs/heavy-equipment-operations/heavy-logging-equipment-operations/\">Heavy Equipment Logging Operations\u003c/a>. Soon after, they formed the \u003ca href=\"https://craftprogram.net/\">California Registered Apprenticeship Forest Training\u003c/a> program. Shasta College used $3.5 million in grant funds to buy the equipment pre-apprentices use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Logging instruction takes place on land owned by Sierra Pacific Industries lumber company — which does not employ its own loggers and so relies on companies like Creekside Lumber to fell and transport logs to mills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each semester, 10 student loggers like Knight take the pre-apprenticeship course at Shasta College. Nearly all are hired upon completion. Once employed, they continue their work as apprentices in the forest training program, which Shasta College runs in partnership with employers like Gannon. State apprenticeship funds help employers offset the cost of training new workers, as well as the lost productivity of on-the-job mentors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Creekside Logging — a 22-person company — working with Shasta College makes participation in the apprenticeship program possible. Gannon’s company often trained new loggers, only to have them back out of the job months later. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to train a new worker, and Creekside couldn’t afford to keep taking the financial risk. Now Gannon has a steady flow of committed employees, trained at the college rather than on his payroll. Workers who complete the pre-apprenticeship know what they’re getting into — working outdoors in the cold all day, driving big machines and cutting down trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workers who complete the apprenticeship, Gannon said, are generally looking for a career and not just a seasonal job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You get folks that are going to show up every day,” Gannon said. “They got to test drive the career and know they like heavy equipment. They want to work in the woods. The college has solved that for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apprentices benefit too. Workers who didn’t grow up around a trade can try it out, which for some means tracking down an elusive pathway into the work. Kyra Lierly grew up in Redding, about 30 miles west of Shingletown, and previously worked for the California Department of Forestry as a firefighter. She’s used to hard work, but when she looked into getting a job as a logger she couldn’t find a way in. Some companies had no office phone or website, she says. Jobs were given out casually, by word of mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65340\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65340\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person operating heavy machinery\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1791\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-800x560.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-1020x714.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-768x537.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-1536x1075.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-2048x1433.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-1920x1343.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucas Licea operates a loader at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. The loader is responsible for stacking and organizing logs \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“A lot of logging outfits are sketchy, and I wanted to work somewhere safe,” said Lierly, 25. She worked as an apprentice with Creekside Lumber but is taking a break while she completes an internship at Sierra Pacific Industries, a lumber producer, and gets a certificate in natural resources at Shasta College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The apprenticeship made forestry less intimidating because the college isn’t going to partner with any company that isn’t reputable,” Lierly said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apprenticeships, with their combination of hands-on and classroom learning, are found in many union halls but, until now, was not known to be common practice in the forested sites of logging crews.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State and federally registered apprenticeships have gained popularity in recent years as training tools in health care, cybersecurity and telecommunications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal funding grew steadily from $145 million in \u003ca href=\"https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45171\">2018\u003c/a> to more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20240711-0\">$244 million\u003c/a> during the last years of the Biden administration. That money was used to support apprenticeships in traditional building trades as well as industries that don’t traditionally offer registered apprenticeships, including teaching and nursing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investment was meant to address the \u003ca href=\"https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage\">shortage of skilled workers\u003c/a>. The number of working adults in the U.S. doesn’t align with the number of skilled jobs, a disparity that is only slowly recovering after the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Labor shortages hit especially hard in rural areas, where trades like logging have an outsized impact on their local economies. For regional heritage trades like logging, just a few apprentices can make the difference between staying in business and shutting down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a common misconception of registered apprentices that they’re only in the building trades when most are in a variety of sectors,” said Manny Lamarre, who served as deputy assistant secretary for employment and training with the Labor Department during the Biden administration. More than 5,000 new occupations have registered with the department to offer apprenticeships since 2021, he said. “We can specifically support unique small occupations in rural communities where a lot of people are retiring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65344\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65344\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person operating heavy machinery while being supervised\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1844\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-800x576.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-1020x735.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-160x115.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-768x553.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-1536x1106.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-2048x1475.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-1920x1383.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Hockenberry, left, observes the pre-apprentices as Dylan Knight drives a masticator at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was confirmed earlier this month, said in her confirmation hearing that she supports apprenticeships. But \u003ca href=\"https://the-job.beehiiv.com/p/more-apprenticeship-cuts\">ongoing cuts\u003c/a> make it unclear what the new federal role will be in supporting such programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, “sharing the capacity has been an important way to get apprenticeships into rural and small employers,” said Vanessa Bennett, director at the Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. It’s helpful when employers partner with a nonprofit or community college that can sponsor an apprenticeship program, as Shasta College does, Bennett said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once Knight, the student logger, completes the heavy equipment pre-apprenticeship, he plans to return to his hometown of Oroville, about 100 miles south of Shingletown. His tribe — the Berry Creek Rancheria of Tyme Maidu Indians — is starting its own logging crew, and Knight will be one of only two members trained to use some of the most challenging pieces of logging equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This program is awesome,” said Knight, 24. “It’s really hands-on. You learn as you go and it helps to have a great instructor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the country in Maine, a community college is helping to train apprentices for jobs at heritage oyster, mussel and kelp farms that have struggled to find enough workers to meet the growing demand for shellfish. Often classified as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncfh.org/aquaculture-workers-fact-sheet.html#:~:text=Aquaculture%20workers%20in%20the%20U.S.,%2Dharvest%20processing.%5B9%5D\">seasonal work\u003c/a>, aquaculture jobs can become year-round careers for workers trained in both harvesting shellfish and planning for future seasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I love the farm work and I feel confident that I will be able to make a full-length career out of this,” said Gabe Chlebowski, who completed a year-long apprenticeship with Muscongus Bay Aquaculture, which harvests in Damariscotta, Maine. A farm boy from rural Pennsylvania, Chlebowski worked in construction and stone masonry after high school. When his parents moved to Maine, he realized that he wanted a job on the water. With no prior experience, he applied for an oyster farming apprenticeship and was accepted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was the youngest by five years and the only person who’d never worked on water,” said Chlebowski, 22. “I grew up in a landlocked state surrounded by corn fields. I had the work ethic and no idea what I was doing in boats.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65339\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65339\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person in helmet walking through forest\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Aguilar walks through a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The apprenticeship program was launched in 2023 by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, which joined with the Maine Aquaculture Association and Educate Maine to create a yearlong apprenticeship with Southern Maine Community College. Apprentices take classes in shellfish biology, water safety, skiff driving and basic boat maintenance. Grants helped pay for the boots, jackets and fishing bibs apprentices needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The workforce here was a bottleneck,” said Carissa Maurin, aquaculture program manager for GMRI. New workers with degrees in marine biology were changing their minds after starting training at aquaculture farms. “Farms were wasting time and money on employees that didn’t want to be there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chlebowski completed the apprenticeship at Muscongus Bay in September. He learned how to repair a Yamaha outdoor motor, how to grade oysters and how to work on a 24-foot, flat-bottom skiff. He stayed on as an employee, working at the farm on the Damariscotta River — the oyster capital of New England. The company is known for two varieties of oysters: Dodge Cove Pemaquid and Wawenauk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oyster farming generates local pride, Chlebowski said. The Shuck Station in downtown Damariscotta gives oyster farmers a free drink when they come in and there’s an annual summer shucking festival. But the company is trying to provide careers, Chlebowski said, not just high-season jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be hard to make a career out of farming, but it’s like any trade,” he said, adding that there is work to do year-round. “Welding and HVAC have trade schools and apprenticeships. Why shouldn’t aquaculture?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chlebowski’s apprenticeship turned into a career. Back in Shingletown, students in the logging program hope for the same result when they finish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until then, they spend Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the woods learning how to operate and maintain equipment. Tuesdays and Thursdays are spent on Shasta College’s Redding campus, where the apprentices take three classes: construction equipment operation, introduction to forestry and wood products and milling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65338\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65338\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person walks past heavy machinery in a forest\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Hockenberry observes the pre-apprentices as Dylan Knight drives a masticator at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the end of the semester, students demonstrate their skills at a showcase in the Shingletown woods. Logging company representatives will attend and scout for workers. Students typically get offers at the showcase. So far, 50 students have completed the pre-apprenticeship program and most transitioned into full apprenticeships. Fifteen people have completed the full apprenticeship program and now earn from $40,000 to $90,000 a year as loggers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mentorship is at the heart of apprenticeships. On the job, new workers are paired with more experienced loggers who pass on knowledge and supervise the rookies as they complete tasks. Pre-apprentices at Shasta College learn from Jonas Lindblom, the program’s heavy equipment and logging operations instructor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the logging site, Lindblom watches as a tall sugar pine slowly falls and thuds to the ground. Lindblom’s father, grandfathers and great-grandfather all drove trucks for logging companies in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a good area for apprentices to “just be able to learn at their pace,” he said. “They’re not pushed and they can get comfortable in the machines without developing bad habits along the way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lindblom, who studied agriculture education at Chico State University, spent all his breaks during college working as a logger. He works closely with the logging companies that partner with the program to make sure he’s teaching up-to-date practices. It’s better for new loggers to learn in this outdoor classroom, he said, than on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65343\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65343\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Cut tree trunk with embedded axe\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An axe in a freshly cut tree stump at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The majority of these students did not grow up in logging families,” he said. “This is a great opportunity to pass on this knowledge and share where the industry is going.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact editor Christina A. Samuels at 212-678-3635 or \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"mailto:samuels@hechingereport.org\">\u003cem>samuels@hechingereport.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/apprenticeships-are-bringing-new-workers-to-heritage-industries\">\u003cem>learning on the job\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/highereducation/\">\u003cem>the Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Apprenticeship programs for heritage industries, such as logging and aquaculture, which can be very small are being adopted by community colleges and can help students learn on the job. \r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/apprenticeships-are-bringing-new-workers-to-heritage-industries\">\u003cem>learning on the job\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/highereducation/\">\u003cem>the Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SHINGLETOWN, Calif. — On a cold morning in October, the sun shone weakly through tall sugar pines and cedars in Shingletown, a small Northern California outpost whose name is a reminder of its history as a logging camp in the 1800s. Up a gravel road banked with iron-rich red soil, Dylan Knight took a break from stacking logs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knight is one of 10 student loggers at Shasta College training to operate the heavy equipment required for modern-day logging: processors to remove limbs from logs that have just been cut, skidders to pull logs out of the cutting site, loaders to stack and sort the logs by species and masticators to mulch up debris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For centuries, logging was a seasonal, learn-on-the-job trade passed down from father to son. But as climate change and innovations in the industry have changed logging into a year-round business, there aren’t always enough workers to fill jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our workforce was dying,” said Delbert Gannon, owner of Creekside Logging. “You couldn’t even pick from the bottom of the barrel. It was affecting our production and our ability to haul logs. We felt we had to do something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the country, community colleges are stepping in to run apprenticeship programs for heritage industries, such as logging and aquaculture, which are too small to run. These partnerships help colleges expand the workforce development programs central to their mission. The partnerships also help keep small businesses in small industries alive by managing state and federal grants and providing the equipment, courses and staff to train workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As industries go, logging is small, and it’s struggling. In 2023 there were only \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/logging-workers.htm\">about 50,000 logging jobs\u003c/a> in the U.S., but the number of logging companies has been \u003ca href=\"https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ENUUS000205113?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true\">on the decline\u003c/a> for several years. \u003ca href=\"https://forestresources.org/2024/08/08/why-we-still-need-to-worry-about-the-logging-sector/\">Most loggers are over 50\u003c/a>, according to industry data, and older generations are retiring, contributing to more than 6,000 vacant positions every year on average. The median \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/logging-workers.htm\">annual salary\u003c/a> for loggers is about $50,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65345\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65345\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person with helmet covered with stickers\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1801\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-800x563.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-1020x718.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-160x113.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-768x540.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-1536x1081.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-2048x1441.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-08-1920x1351.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Talon Gramps-Green shows stickers on his helmet at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Retirements have hit Creekside Logging hard. In 2018 Gannon’s company had jobs to do, and the machines to do them, but nobody to do the work. He reached out to Shasta College, which offers certificates and degrees in forestry and heavy equipment operation, to see if there might be a student who could help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That conversation led to a formal partnership between the college and 19 timber companies to create a pre-apprenticeship course in \u003ca href=\"https://www.shastacollege.edu/academics/programs/heavy-equipment-operations/heavy-logging-equipment-operations/\">Heavy Equipment Logging Operations\u003c/a>. Soon after, they formed the \u003ca href=\"https://craftprogram.net/\">California Registered Apprenticeship Forest Training\u003c/a> program. Shasta College used $3.5 million in grant funds to buy the equipment pre-apprentices use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Logging instruction takes place on land owned by Sierra Pacific Industries lumber company — which does not employ its own loggers and so relies on companies like Creekside Lumber to fell and transport logs to mills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each semester, 10 student loggers like Knight take the pre-apprenticeship course at Shasta College. Nearly all are hired upon completion. Once employed, they continue their work as apprentices in the forest training program, which Shasta College runs in partnership with employers like Gannon. State apprenticeship funds help employers offset the cost of training new workers, as well as the lost productivity of on-the-job mentors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Creekside Logging — a 22-person company — working with Shasta College makes participation in the apprenticeship program possible. Gannon’s company often trained new loggers, only to have them back out of the job months later. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to train a new worker, and Creekside couldn’t afford to keep taking the financial risk. Now Gannon has a steady flow of committed employees, trained at the college rather than on his payroll. Workers who complete the pre-apprenticeship know what they’re getting into — working outdoors in the cold all day, driving big machines and cutting down trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workers who complete the apprenticeship, Gannon said, are generally looking for a career and not just a seasonal job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You get folks that are going to show up every day,” Gannon said. “They got to test drive the career and know they like heavy equipment. They want to work in the woods. The college has solved that for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apprentices benefit too. Workers who didn’t grow up around a trade can try it out, which for some means tracking down an elusive pathway into the work. Kyra Lierly grew up in Redding, about 30 miles west of Shingletown, and previously worked for the California Department of Forestry as a firefighter. She’s used to hard work, but when she looked into getting a job as a logger she couldn’t find a way in. Some companies had no office phone or website, she says. Jobs were given out casually, by word of mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65340\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65340\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person operating heavy machinery\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1791\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-800x560.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-1020x714.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-768x537.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-1536x1075.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-2048x1433.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-03-1920x1343.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucas Licea operates a loader at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. The loader is responsible for stacking and organizing logs \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“A lot of logging outfits are sketchy, and I wanted to work somewhere safe,” said Lierly, 25. She worked as an apprentice with Creekside Lumber but is taking a break while she completes an internship at Sierra Pacific Industries, a lumber producer, and gets a certificate in natural resources at Shasta College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The apprenticeship made forestry less intimidating because the college isn’t going to partner with any company that isn’t reputable,” Lierly said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apprenticeships, with their combination of hands-on and classroom learning, are found in many union halls but, until now, was not known to be common practice in the forested sites of logging crews.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State and federally registered apprenticeships have gained popularity in recent years as training tools in health care, cybersecurity and telecommunications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal funding grew steadily from $145 million in \u003ca href=\"https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45171\">2018\u003c/a> to more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20240711-0\">$244 million\u003c/a> during the last years of the Biden administration. That money was used to support apprenticeships in traditional building trades as well as industries that don’t traditionally offer registered apprenticeships, including teaching and nursing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investment was meant to address the \u003ca href=\"https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage\">shortage of skilled workers\u003c/a>. The number of working adults in the U.S. doesn’t align with the number of skilled jobs, a disparity that is only slowly recovering after the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Labor shortages hit especially hard in rural areas, where trades like logging have an outsized impact on their local economies. For regional heritage trades like logging, just a few apprentices can make the difference between staying in business and shutting down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a common misconception of registered apprentices that they’re only in the building trades when most are in a variety of sectors,” said Manny Lamarre, who served as deputy assistant secretary for employment and training with the Labor Department during the Biden administration. More than 5,000 new occupations have registered with the department to offer apprenticeships since 2021, he said. “We can specifically support unique small occupations in rural communities where a lot of people are retiring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65344\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65344\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person operating heavy machinery while being supervised\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1844\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-800x576.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-1020x735.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-160x115.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-768x553.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-1536x1106.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-2048x1475.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-04-1920x1383.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Hockenberry, left, observes the pre-apprentices as Dylan Knight drives a masticator at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was confirmed earlier this month, said in her confirmation hearing that she supports apprenticeships. But \u003ca href=\"https://the-job.beehiiv.com/p/more-apprenticeship-cuts\">ongoing cuts\u003c/a> make it unclear what the new federal role will be in supporting such programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, “sharing the capacity has been an important way to get apprenticeships into rural and small employers,” said Vanessa Bennett, director at the Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. It’s helpful when employers partner with a nonprofit or community college that can sponsor an apprenticeship program, as Shasta College does, Bennett said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once Knight, the student logger, completes the heavy equipment pre-apprenticeship, he plans to return to his hometown of Oroville, about 100 miles south of Shingletown. His tribe — the Berry Creek Rancheria of Tyme Maidu Indians — is starting its own logging crew, and Knight will be one of only two members trained to use some of the most challenging pieces of logging equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This program is awesome,” said Knight, 24. “It’s really hands-on. You learn as you go and it helps to have a great instructor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the country in Maine, a community college is helping to train apprentices for jobs at heritage oyster, mussel and kelp farms that have struggled to find enough workers to meet the growing demand for shellfish. Often classified as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncfh.org/aquaculture-workers-fact-sheet.html#:~:text=Aquaculture%20workers%20in%20the%20U.S.,%2Dharvest%20processing.%5B9%5D\">seasonal work\u003c/a>, aquaculture jobs can become year-round careers for workers trained in both harvesting shellfish and planning for future seasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I love the farm work and I feel confident that I will be able to make a full-length career out of this,” said Gabe Chlebowski, who completed a year-long apprenticeship with Muscongus Bay Aquaculture, which harvests in Damariscotta, Maine. A farm boy from rural Pennsylvania, Chlebowski worked in construction and stone masonry after high school. When his parents moved to Maine, he realized that he wanted a job on the water. With no prior experience, he applied for an oyster farming apprenticeship and was accepted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was the youngest by five years and the only person who’d never worked on water,” said Chlebowski, 22. “I grew up in a landlocked state surrounded by corn fields. I had the work ethic and no idea what I was doing in boats.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65339\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65339\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person in helmet walking through forest\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Aguilar walks through a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The apprenticeship program was launched in 2023 by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, which joined with the Maine Aquaculture Association and Educate Maine to create a yearlong apprenticeship with Southern Maine Community College. Apprentices take classes in shellfish biology, water safety, skiff driving and basic boat maintenance. Grants helped pay for the boots, jackets and fishing bibs apprentices needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The workforce here was a bottleneck,” said Carissa Maurin, aquaculture program manager for GMRI. New workers with degrees in marine biology were changing their minds after starting training at aquaculture farms. “Farms were wasting time and money on employees that didn’t want to be there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chlebowski completed the apprenticeship at Muscongus Bay in September. He learned how to repair a Yamaha outdoor motor, how to grade oysters and how to work on a 24-foot, flat-bottom skiff. He stayed on as an employee, working at the farm on the Damariscotta River — the oyster capital of New England. The company is known for two varieties of oysters: Dodge Cove Pemaquid and Wawenauk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oyster farming generates local pride, Chlebowski said. The Shuck Station in downtown Damariscotta gives oyster farmers a free drink when they come in and there’s an annual summer shucking festival. But the company is trying to provide careers, Chlebowski said, not just high-season jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be hard to make a career out of farming, but it’s like any trade,” he said, adding that there is work to do year-round. “Welding and HVAC have trade schools and apprenticeships. Why shouldn’t aquaculture?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chlebowski’s apprenticeship turned into a career. Back in Shingletown, students in the logging program hope for the same result when they finish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until then, they spend Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the woods learning how to operate and maintain equipment. Tuesdays and Thursdays are spent on Shasta College’s Redding campus, where the apprentices take three classes: construction equipment operation, introduction to forestry and wood products and milling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65338\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65338\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Person walks past heavy machinery in a forest\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-01-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Hockenberry observes the pre-apprentices as Dylan Knight drives a masticator at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the end of the semester, students demonstrate their skills at a showcase in the Shingletown woods. Logging company representatives will attend and scout for workers. Students typically get offers at the showcase. So far, 50 students have completed the pre-apprenticeship program and most transitioned into full apprenticeships. Fifteen people have completed the full apprenticeship program and now earn from $40,000 to $90,000 a year as loggers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mentorship is at the heart of apprenticeships. On the job, new workers are paired with more experienced loggers who pass on knowledge and supervise the rookies as they complete tasks. Pre-apprentices at Shasta College learn from Jonas Lindblom, the program’s heavy equipment and logging operations instructor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the logging site, Lindblom watches as a tall sugar pine slowly falls and thuds to the ground. Lindblom’s father, grandfathers and great-grandfather all drove trucks for logging companies in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a good area for apprentices to “just be able to learn at their pace,” he said. “They’re not pushed and they can get comfortable in the machines without developing bad habits along the way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lindblom, who studied agriculture education at Chico State University, spent all his breaks during college working as a logger. He works closely with the logging companies that partner with the program to make sure he’s teaching up-to-date practices. It’s better for new loggers to learn in this outdoor classroom, he said, than on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65343\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65343\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Cut tree trunk with embedded axe\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/rix-heritage-apprenticeship-05-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An axe in a freshly cut tree stump at a logging site on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Shingletown, Calif. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The majority of these students did not grow up in logging families,” he said. “This is a great opportunity to pass on this knowledge and share where the industry is going.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact editor Christina A. Samuels at 212-678-3635 or \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"mailto:samuels@hechingereport.org\">\u003cem>samuels@hechingereport.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/apprenticeships-are-bringing-new-workers-to-heritage-industries\">\u003cem>learning on the job\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/highereducation/\">\u003cem>the Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Apprenticeships are a Trending Alternative to College — But There's a Hitch",
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"content": "\u003cp>Joey Cook was 17 and a junior in high school when he heard about a way to learn a profession while getting paid: by landing an apprenticeship, a path into the workforce that everyone was suddenly talking about as an alternative to college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t want to go get an associate degree,” he says. “I didn’t want to get a bachelor’s degree.” Cook wanted a certification in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, an in-demand field in his rural Texas hometown of Hamlin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An apprenticeship would lead to that. But when he began making inquiries, he was told that if he wanted an apprenticeship, he’d have to find it himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His disappointment was brief; a local HVAC company happened to be looking for apprentices, and hired him. “It was perfect timing,” Cook recalls. He sailed through the training and now, at 20, is working at the company full time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Cook’s experience also spotlights a big hitch in the movement for apprenticeships, even as they’re being pushed by policymakers and politicians of all stripes and expanded beyond the trades to jobs in tech and other industries: Demand for apprenticeships is outpacing their availability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those employers are really dang hard to find,” says Brittany Williams, chief partnerships officer at Edu-REACH — it stands for Rural Education Achievement for Community Hope — the nonprofit organization that now works to find apprenticeships for students in and around Hamlin, including at the high school Cook attended.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A case of demand outrunning supply\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Apprenticeships combine paid on-the-job training with classroom time. Increasing their use has bipartisan support and was a rare subject of agreement between the presidential candidates in the recent election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’ve also benefited from growing public skepticism about the need for college: Only 1 in 4 adults now says a four-year degree is extremely or very important to get a good job, the Pew Research Center finds. And nearly two-thirds of 14- to 18-year-olds say their ideal education would involve learning skills on the job, as in apprenticeships, according to a survey by the ECMC Group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while more Americans may see apprenticeships as a path into the workforce, employers have generally been slow to offer them.\u003cbr>\nPut simply, Williams says: “We have more learners than we have employers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are\u003ca href=\"https://www.apprenticeship.gov/data-and-statistics/apprentices-by-state-dashboard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> currently \u003cu>680,288 Americans in apprenticeships\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, according to the U.S. Department of Labor — up 89 percent since 2014, the earliest year for which the figure is available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s not even half of 1 percent of the U.S. workforce. By comparison, there are more than 18 million Americans in college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An emerging body of research nationwide blames this imbalance partly on reluctance among employers to provide apprenticeships. Training people for work, after all, was a job that most of them previously relied on colleges and universities to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apprenticeships are likely to continue to be encouraged under President Donald Trump, who pushed them in his first administration and whose nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, is a vocal booster. His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, promised to double the number of apprenticeships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But employers find them expensive to set up, since apprentices have to be paid and mentored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s holding it back is the cost, both in terms of the financial cost and the people who are going to engage the trainees,” says Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “The way employers see it, they’re going to invest this money and train these people, but they have no guarantee of keeping them. There’s no contract that says you have to stay. And who wants to train their competitors? Nobody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, 94 percent of apprentices\u003ca href=\"https://nationalapprenticeship.org/business-benefits\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>stay with their employers\u003c/u>\u003c/a> when they’re finished with their programs, according to the Labor Department. And for every dollar invested in an apprenticeship, an employer\u003ca href=\"https://www.abtglobal.com/files/insights/reports/2022/aai-roi-final-report-508c_9-16-22.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>realizes an average return of $1.44\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, the Urban Institute found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The apprentices, on the one hand, are costing money because they don’t know everything yet, and they’re having to be mentored,” says Robert Lerman, a former professor of economics at American University, and chair of Apprenticeships for America. “But on the other hand, they’re doing things you’d have to pay somebody else to do anyway. So if employers do it right, they can recoup a lot of their investment pretty fast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, getting employers on board “is the stage we’re at now,” says Lerman. “You have to get out there and help an employer change what they’ve been doing in recruiting and training workers, and that is not easy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even big companies, he adds, need help launching a program. “And if that’s the case with them, you can imagine the case with smaller companies. They don’t even know what you’re talking about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orrian Willis works with many of those big companies as a senior workforce development specialist for the city of San Francisco. Even at big tech firms that have started apprenticeship programs, he says, those efforts are small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve seen some of our partner companies post their apprenticeships on Indeed or LinkedIn and within a few days they have to take them down, because they’ve gotten so many applications.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the recent publicity around apprenticeships means people “think they can roll right in and go ahead and get” one, says Kathy Neary, chief strategy and business engagement officer at the Center of Workforce Innovations in northwest Indiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That isn’t proving true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have nearly enough seats to meet demand,” says Jennie Niles, president and CEO of CityWorks DC, a nonprofit that offers apprenticeships for high school students in Washington, D.C. “The reason we don’t have the demand from the employers is because it’s so complicated. Employers first and foremost need it to be easy for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Calls for streamlining the process\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among other things, employers are discouraged by red tape. The federal government recognizes so-called registered apprenticeships, which require employers to meet quality standards and provide worker protections and must be approved by the Department of Labor or a state apprenticeship agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a ton of paperwork,” says Williams of Edu-REACH.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Labor Department proposed\u003ca href=\"https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20231214-0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>updates to the regulations\u003c/u>\u003c/a> aimed at strengthening worker protections, among other changes. Critics complained this would only make things worse, and the proposal was \u003ca href=\"https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=571761\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>quietly withdrawn \u003c/u>\u003c/a>last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The suggested rules filled hundreds of pages, threatening “\u003ca href=\"https://www.jff.org/a-system-for-the-future-jffs-perspectives-on-proposed-apprenticeship-system-updates-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>to overwhelm the system\u003c/u>\u003c/a> and introduce confusion and unintended consequences,” according to the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. “Employers find the existing apprenticeship system to be confusing and cumbersome already.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The organization argued that the additions would make apprenticeships an even harder sell to employers and reduce instead of increase the number of apprenticeships available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first Trump administration created a new category of apprenticeships, called “industry-recognized,” run by trade associations of employers instead of requiring the existing level of government oversight. They were ended by the Biden administration, but some observers expect they may now be reintroduced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are also calls for more support for government subsidies for apprenticeships. Many states already \u003ca href=\"https://www.apprenticeship.gov/investments-tax-credits-and-tuition-support/state-tax-credits-and-tuition-support\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">offer employers tax credits\u003c/a> for apprenticeships, from $1,000 per year per apprentice in South Carolina up to $7,500 in Connecticut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/2700x1800+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbb%2Fe9%2Fbb68b05e47949e130560a455a070%2Fgettyimages-1244388025.jpg\" alt=\"Students in a classroom at Ironworkers Local 29 during a steel work apprenticeship in Dayton.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students in a classroom at Ironworkers Local 29 during a steel work apprenticeship in Dayton. (Megan Jelinger | AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Advocates for apprenticeships want more funding for intermediaries such as Edu-REACH and CityWorks DC that connect prospective apprentices with employers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to help steward the business through building these types of experiences,” says Betsy Revell, senior vice president at EmployIndy, the workforce board in Indianapolis, which does this. “They need a lot of help figuring it out. They’ve never had to supervise a 16- or 17-year-old before, or help them identify coursework” that is typically a part of apprenticeship programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Hamlin, Texas, Joey Cook has seen this himself, as a young apprentice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can see both sides,” he says. While an apprenticeship was a great path for him, “for businesses, they’re taking a leap of faith on kids who have never had a legitimate job.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until more employers bridge that gap, says Krysti Specht, who co-directs Jobs for the Future’s center for apprenticeships, “it doesn’t personally make sense to me to create a groundswell for opportunities that don’t exist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>The Hechinger Report\u003c/u>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Joey Cook was 17 and a junior in high school when he heard about a way to learn a profession while getting paid: by landing an apprenticeship, a path into the workforce that everyone was suddenly talking about as an alternative to college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t want to go get an associate degree,” he says. “I didn’t want to get a bachelor’s degree.” Cook wanted a certification in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, an in-demand field in his rural Texas hometown of Hamlin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An apprenticeship would lead to that. But when he began making inquiries, he was told that if he wanted an apprenticeship, he’d have to find it himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His disappointment was brief; a local HVAC company happened to be looking for apprentices, and hired him. “It was perfect timing,” Cook recalls. He sailed through the training and now, at 20, is working at the company full time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Cook’s experience also spotlights a big hitch in the movement for apprenticeships, even as they’re being pushed by policymakers and politicians of all stripes and expanded beyond the trades to jobs in tech and other industries: Demand for apprenticeships is outpacing their availability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those employers are really dang hard to find,” says Brittany Williams, chief partnerships officer at Edu-REACH — it stands for Rural Education Achievement for Community Hope — the nonprofit organization that now works to find apprenticeships for students in and around Hamlin, including at the high school Cook attended.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A case of demand outrunning supply\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Apprenticeships combine paid on-the-job training with classroom time. Increasing their use has bipartisan support and was a rare subject of agreement between the presidential candidates in the recent election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’ve also benefited from growing public skepticism about the need for college: Only 1 in 4 adults now says a four-year degree is extremely or very important to get a good job, the Pew Research Center finds. And nearly two-thirds of 14- to 18-year-olds say their ideal education would involve learning skills on the job, as in apprenticeships, according to a survey by the ECMC Group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while more Americans may see apprenticeships as a path into the workforce, employers have generally been slow to offer them.\u003cbr>\nPut simply, Williams says: “We have more learners than we have employers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are\u003ca href=\"https://www.apprenticeship.gov/data-and-statistics/apprentices-by-state-dashboard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> currently \u003cu>680,288 Americans in apprenticeships\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, according to the U.S. Department of Labor — up 89 percent since 2014, the earliest year for which the figure is available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s not even half of 1 percent of the U.S. workforce. By comparison, there are more than 18 million Americans in college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An emerging body of research nationwide blames this imbalance partly on reluctance among employers to provide apprenticeships. Training people for work, after all, was a job that most of them previously relied on colleges and universities to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apprenticeships are likely to continue to be encouraged under President Donald Trump, who pushed them in his first administration and whose nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, is a vocal booster. His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, promised to double the number of apprenticeships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But employers find them expensive to set up, since apprentices have to be paid and mentored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s holding it back is the cost, both in terms of the financial cost and the people who are going to engage the trainees,” says Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “The way employers see it, they’re going to invest this money and train these people, but they have no guarantee of keeping them. There’s no contract that says you have to stay. And who wants to train their competitors? Nobody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, 94 percent of apprentices\u003ca href=\"https://nationalapprenticeship.org/business-benefits\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>stay with their employers\u003c/u>\u003c/a> when they’re finished with their programs, according to the Labor Department. And for every dollar invested in an apprenticeship, an employer\u003ca href=\"https://www.abtglobal.com/files/insights/reports/2022/aai-roi-final-report-508c_9-16-22.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>realizes an average return of $1.44\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, the Urban Institute found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The apprentices, on the one hand, are costing money because they don’t know everything yet, and they’re having to be mentored,” says Robert Lerman, a former professor of economics at American University, and chair of Apprenticeships for America. “But on the other hand, they’re doing things you’d have to pay somebody else to do anyway. So if employers do it right, they can recoup a lot of their investment pretty fast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, getting employers on board “is the stage we’re at now,” says Lerman. “You have to get out there and help an employer change what they’ve been doing in recruiting and training workers, and that is not easy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even big companies, he adds, need help launching a program. “And if that’s the case with them, you can imagine the case with smaller companies. They don’t even know what you’re talking about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orrian Willis works with many of those big companies as a senior workforce development specialist for the city of San Francisco. Even at big tech firms that have started apprenticeship programs, he says, those efforts are small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve seen some of our partner companies post their apprenticeships on Indeed or LinkedIn and within a few days they have to take them down, because they’ve gotten so many applications.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the recent publicity around apprenticeships means people “think they can roll right in and go ahead and get” one, says Kathy Neary, chief strategy and business engagement officer at the Center of Workforce Innovations in northwest Indiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That isn’t proving true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have nearly enough seats to meet demand,” says Jennie Niles, president and CEO of CityWorks DC, a nonprofit that offers apprenticeships for high school students in Washington, D.C. “The reason we don’t have the demand from the employers is because it’s so complicated. Employers first and foremost need it to be easy for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Calls for streamlining the process\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among other things, employers are discouraged by red tape. The federal government recognizes so-called registered apprenticeships, which require employers to meet quality standards and provide worker protections and must be approved by the Department of Labor or a state apprenticeship agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a ton of paperwork,” says Williams of Edu-REACH.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Labor Department proposed\u003ca href=\"https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20231214-0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>updates to the regulations\u003c/u>\u003c/a> aimed at strengthening worker protections, among other changes. Critics complained this would only make things worse, and the proposal was \u003ca href=\"https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=571761\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>quietly withdrawn \u003c/u>\u003c/a>last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The suggested rules filled hundreds of pages, threatening “\u003ca href=\"https://www.jff.org/a-system-for-the-future-jffs-perspectives-on-proposed-apprenticeship-system-updates-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>to overwhelm the system\u003c/u>\u003c/a> and introduce confusion and unintended consequences,” according to the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. “Employers find the existing apprenticeship system to be confusing and cumbersome already.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The organization argued that the additions would make apprenticeships an even harder sell to employers and reduce instead of increase the number of apprenticeships available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first Trump administration created a new category of apprenticeships, called “industry-recognized,” run by trade associations of employers instead of requiring the existing level of government oversight. They were ended by the Biden administration, but some observers expect they may now be reintroduced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are also calls for more support for government subsidies for apprenticeships. Many states already \u003ca href=\"https://www.apprenticeship.gov/investments-tax-credits-and-tuition-support/state-tax-credits-and-tuition-support\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">offer employers tax credits\u003c/a> for apprenticeships, from $1,000 per year per apprentice in South Carolina up to $7,500 in Connecticut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/2700x1800+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbb%2Fe9%2Fbb68b05e47949e130560a455a070%2Fgettyimages-1244388025.jpg\" alt=\"Students in a classroom at Ironworkers Local 29 during a steel work apprenticeship in Dayton.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students in a classroom at Ironworkers Local 29 during a steel work apprenticeship in Dayton. (Megan Jelinger | AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Advocates for apprenticeships want more funding for intermediaries such as Edu-REACH and CityWorks DC that connect prospective apprentices with employers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to help steward the business through building these types of experiences,” says Betsy Revell, senior vice president at EmployIndy, the workforce board in Indianapolis, which does this. “They need a lot of help figuring it out. They’ve never had to supervise a 16- or 17-year-old before, or help them identify coursework” that is typically a part of apprenticeship programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Hamlin, Texas, Joey Cook has seen this himself, as a young apprentice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can see both sides,” he says. While an apprenticeship was a great path for him, “for businesses, they’re taking a leap of faith on kids who have never had a legitimate job.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until more employers bridge that gap, says Krysti Specht, who co-directs Jobs for the Future’s center for apprenticeships, “it doesn’t personally make sense to me to create a groundswell for opportunities that don’t exist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>The Hechinger Report\u003c/u>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "college-credit-for-working-your-job-walmart-and-mcdonalds-are-trying-it",
"title": "College Credit for Working Your Job? Walmart and McDonald’s Are Trying It",
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"headTitle": "College Credit for Working Your Job? Walmart and McDonald’s Are Trying It | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>When Walmart \u003ca href=\"https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/09/28/all-learning-counts-at-walmart-5-ways-we-re-investing-in-more-opportunities-to-grow\">stopped requiring college degrees\u003c/a> for most of its corporate jobs last year, the company confronted three deep truths about work and schooling:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A college diploma is only a proxy for what someone knows, and not always a perfect one. A degree’s high cost sidelines many people. For industries dominated by workers without degrees, cultivating future talent demands a different playbook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Behind the scenes, executives often paint a grander transformation of hiring, a world where your resume will rely less on titles or diplomas and act more like a passport of skills you’ve proven you have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, companies and educators are only starting to chip away at one of the first steps: figuring out how much college credit a work skill is worth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Getting credit for Walmart training\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Something unusual happened to Bonnie Boop one semester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’d returned to college in her late 40s using Walmart’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/07/27/1021380394/walmart-offering-full-college-tuition-and-books-for-employees\">tuition-assistance program\u003c/a> after joining the company as a part-time stocker. In her younger years, she had gotten two associate degrees, so her children used to joke that she might as well say she’d gone to school for four years. But to her, it wasn’t the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Bachelor’s degrees tend to open more doors,” Boop says. Plus, she says, she persisted for “the principle of it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Walmart, Boop stocked health and beauty aisles in the evenings after another day job. Later, she went full time and got promoted to supervise others. This required new training at “Walmart Academy”: brief, intensive courses on leadership, financial decision-making and workforce planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then one day, looking at Boop’s upcoming business-operations class at Southern New Hampshire University, which Boop attended online from Alabama, her adviser found the record showing she’d already taken the course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But I didn’t,” Boop says. “And she said, ‘Yes, you got credit from Walmart Academy.’ And I said, what?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through corporate training and certificates that convert to college credit, Walmart Academy aims to get workers as far as halfway to a college degree, the organization’s chief told NPR. Boop had done several such programs, which let her bypass two college courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At her rate of study, “that would have been two semesters’ worth,” Boop says. “I was like, wow!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studying while also holding down a job meant staying up late after her shift that ended at 11 p.m. and keeping a meticulous schedule of big school projects to do on her days off. After 2 1/2 years of this, expedited by her associate degrees, Boop watched her photo slide across the screen at the virtual graduation in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wearing her cap and gown, she posed for photos with her new diploma: Bachelor of Science in business administration, with a concentration in industrial organizational psychology. Today, Boop is her store’s “people lead” overseeing more than 200 workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What’s in it for corporations?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Many American universities have long offered credit for corporate training by companies like Google, IBM or Microsoft. For work in retail and fast food, the process is nascent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McDonald’s is working with several community colleges to build a path for converting on-the-job skills, like safe food handling or customer service, into credit toward degrees in culinary arts, hospitality or insurance. Walmart has over a dozen short-form certificates and 25 training courses — in tech, leadership, digital operations — that translate to credit at partner universities. The car-service chain Jiffy Lube has its own college credit program, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For adults who feel like they weren’t college material, what we are able to do is say, ‘You are. And you’re doing college-level work already,’” says Amber Garrison Duncan, who runs the nonprofit Competency-Based Education Network that connects employers and higher-education institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators hope this brings more students into the fold — expanding access to education and allowing more people to achieve better-paying, more-secure careers with less debt and fewer years of juggling work and study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For companies that offer tuition assistance to employees, the idea that work skills should count toward college credit makes financial sense: It means a student spends less time in school and doesn’t have to pay for classes that would teach them something they already know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And paying for tuition can attract workers in a competitive labor market and keep them longer, slowing turnover, saving money on recruitment and training, and cultivating more loyalty to the employer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McDonald’s and Amazon executives say this is exactly their motivation, noting that many people use their jobs as stepping stones to elsewhere. Walmart’s executives differ, saying that their goal is to build a pipeline of talent from the front lines to open positions within the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The U.S. military paved the way, but it’s not the same\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Counting existing knowledge toward a degree is not a radical idea. Plenty of high school students get a head start on college with credit for AP, or “advanced placement,” classes. Many colleges also offer “credit for prior learning” that lets students skip foreign-language classes if they’re already fluent — or test out of courses through special exams or assessments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. military took the idea further in recent decades. It worked with the American Council on Education to build a comprehensive database of how its jobs and training programs translate to college credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no rule about what colleges and universities have to accept,” says ACE’s Derrick Anderson. “But they can look at the person’s military record … and they figure out how much credit they want to award.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This and other education support made the military “a powerful engine of socioeconomic mobility,” Anderson says. His group’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.acenet.edu/Programs-Services/Pages/Credit-Transcripts/Students.aspx\">database of recommended credit\u003c/a> now spans work experience beyond the military: government, nonprofits, apprenticeships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I see working with employers, higher education and workforce organizations is a growing understanding that work and learning have been two silos in the past and can’t be two silos in the future,” says Haley Glover, director of Aspen Institute’s UpSkill America initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What about skills simply gained by working?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For now, most of the college credit for work experience focuses on “prior learning” that’s taught in a classroom — standardized, structured and measurable enough to fit rigid criteria — such as training or certification programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figuring out how to map on-the-job skills gained otherwise is the big leap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a complex thing,” Glover says. “It requires an employer to be very rigorous about how they’re codifying and assessing, and that’s a capacity that a lot of employers don’t have. It also requires institutions of learning to be very open and progressive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, some colleges have allowed students to present a portfolio, diligently documenting learnings on and off the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The McDonald’s pilot program is considering how this could work for restaurant employees. Some schools offer a separate course, for example, specifically for compiling a work-skills portfolio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But expanding this system to the retail and food-service universe would require an army of academics willing to perform individual reviews. That’s a tremendous amount of time, and professors are often hesitant to commit — especially if it means they’d miss out on a potential student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This definitely is a process that disrupts what traditional higher ed is used to, in terms of seat time — credit for sitting in a class and doing assignments,” says Brianne McDonough at the workforce development nonprofit Jobs for the Future. “It’s a big change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, there are more basic challenges. Many workers simply don’t know about their employers’ education offers or struggle to navigate the application bureaucracies. They often receive little scheduling leeway to balance their working and studying hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shockingly tragic” was how Anderson described the small share of workers taking advantage of corporate college perks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s partly why hiring and education officials talk about a \u003ca href=\"https://hbr.org/2023/03/the-new-collar-workforce\">“skills-first approach” to higher education\u003c/a> — a future of short-form certificates and credentials weighed on par with college degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a problem that a lot of companies are trying to solve for,” says Lorraine Stomski, who heads Walmart’s learning and leadership programs. “What are the rules of the future?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Walmart \u003ca href=\"https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/09/28/all-learning-counts-at-walmart-5-ways-we-re-investing-in-more-opportunities-to-grow\">stopped requiring college degrees\u003c/a> for most of its corporate jobs last year, the company confronted three deep truths about work and schooling:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A college diploma is only a proxy for what someone knows, and not always a perfect one. A degree’s high cost sidelines many people. For industries dominated by workers without degrees, cultivating future talent demands a different playbook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Behind the scenes, executives often paint a grander transformation of hiring, a world where your resume will rely less on titles or diplomas and act more like a passport of skills you’ve proven you have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, companies and educators are only starting to chip away at one of the first steps: figuring out how much college credit a work skill is worth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Getting credit for Walmart training\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Something unusual happened to Bonnie Boop one semester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’d returned to college in her late 40s using Walmart’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/07/27/1021380394/walmart-offering-full-college-tuition-and-books-for-employees\">tuition-assistance program\u003c/a> after joining the company as a part-time stocker. In her younger years, she had gotten two associate degrees, so her children used to joke that she might as well say she’d gone to school for four years. But to her, it wasn’t the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Bachelor’s degrees tend to open more doors,” Boop says. Plus, she says, she persisted for “the principle of it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Walmart, Boop stocked health and beauty aisles in the evenings after another day job. Later, she went full time and got promoted to supervise others. This required new training at “Walmart Academy”: brief, intensive courses on leadership, financial decision-making and workforce planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then one day, looking at Boop’s upcoming business-operations class at Southern New Hampshire University, which Boop attended online from Alabama, her adviser found the record showing she’d already taken the course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But I didn’t,” Boop says. “And she said, ‘Yes, you got credit from Walmart Academy.’ And I said, what?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through corporate training and certificates that convert to college credit, Walmart Academy aims to get workers as far as halfway to a college degree, the organization’s chief told NPR. Boop had done several such programs, which let her bypass two college courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At her rate of study, “that would have been two semesters’ worth,” Boop says. “I was like, wow!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studying while also holding down a job meant staying up late after her shift that ended at 11 p.m. and keeping a meticulous schedule of big school projects to do on her days off. After 2 1/2 years of this, expedited by her associate degrees, Boop watched her photo slide across the screen at the virtual graduation in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wearing her cap and gown, she posed for photos with her new diploma: Bachelor of Science in business administration, with a concentration in industrial organizational psychology. Today, Boop is her store’s “people lead” overseeing more than 200 workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What’s in it for corporations?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Many American universities have long offered credit for corporate training by companies like Google, IBM or Microsoft. For work in retail and fast food, the process is nascent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McDonald’s is working with several community colleges to build a path for converting on-the-job skills, like safe food handling or customer service, into credit toward degrees in culinary arts, hospitality or insurance. Walmart has over a dozen short-form certificates and 25 training courses — in tech, leadership, digital operations — that translate to credit at partner universities. The car-service chain Jiffy Lube has its own college credit program, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For adults who feel like they weren’t college material, what we are able to do is say, ‘You are. And you’re doing college-level work already,’” says Amber Garrison Duncan, who runs the nonprofit Competency-Based Education Network that connects employers and higher-education institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators hope this brings more students into the fold — expanding access to education and allowing more people to achieve better-paying, more-secure careers with less debt and fewer years of juggling work and study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For companies that offer tuition assistance to employees, the idea that work skills should count toward college credit makes financial sense: It means a student spends less time in school and doesn’t have to pay for classes that would teach them something they already know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And paying for tuition can attract workers in a competitive labor market and keep them longer, slowing turnover, saving money on recruitment and training, and cultivating more loyalty to the employer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McDonald’s and Amazon executives say this is exactly their motivation, noting that many people use their jobs as stepping stones to elsewhere. Walmart’s executives differ, saying that their goal is to build a pipeline of talent from the front lines to open positions within the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The U.S. military paved the way, but it’s not the same\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Counting existing knowledge toward a degree is not a radical idea. Plenty of high school students get a head start on college with credit for AP, or “advanced placement,” classes. Many colleges also offer “credit for prior learning” that lets students skip foreign-language classes if they’re already fluent — or test out of courses through special exams or assessments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. military took the idea further in recent decades. It worked with the American Council on Education to build a comprehensive database of how its jobs and training programs translate to college credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no rule about what colleges and universities have to accept,” says ACE’s Derrick Anderson. “But they can look at the person’s military record … and they figure out how much credit they want to award.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This and other education support made the military “a powerful engine of socioeconomic mobility,” Anderson says. His group’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.acenet.edu/Programs-Services/Pages/Credit-Transcripts/Students.aspx\">database of recommended credit\u003c/a> now spans work experience beyond the military: government, nonprofits, apprenticeships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I see working with employers, higher education and workforce organizations is a growing understanding that work and learning have been two silos in the past and can’t be two silos in the future,” says Haley Glover, director of Aspen Institute’s UpSkill America initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What about skills simply gained by working?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For now, most of the college credit for work experience focuses on “prior learning” that’s taught in a classroom — standardized, structured and measurable enough to fit rigid criteria — such as training or certification programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Figuring out how to map on-the-job skills gained otherwise is the big leap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a complex thing,” Glover says. “It requires an employer to be very rigorous about how they’re codifying and assessing, and that’s a capacity that a lot of employers don’t have. It also requires institutions of learning to be very open and progressive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, some colleges have allowed students to present a portfolio, diligently documenting learnings on and off the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The McDonald’s pilot program is considering how this could work for restaurant employees. Some schools offer a separate course, for example, specifically for compiling a work-skills portfolio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But expanding this system to the retail and food-service universe would require an army of academics willing to perform individual reviews. That’s a tremendous amount of time, and professors are often hesitant to commit — especially if it means they’d miss out on a potential student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This definitely is a process that disrupts what traditional higher ed is used to, in terms of seat time — credit for sitting in a class and doing assignments,” says Brianne McDonough at the workforce development nonprofit Jobs for the Future. “It’s a big change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, there are more basic challenges. Many workers simply don’t know about their employers’ education offers or struggle to navigate the application bureaucracies. They often receive little scheduling leeway to balance their working and studying hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shockingly tragic” was how Anderson described the small share of workers taking advantage of corporate college perks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s partly why hiring and education officials talk about a \u003ca href=\"https://hbr.org/2023/03/the-new-collar-workforce\">“skills-first approach” to higher education\u003c/a> — a future of short-form certificates and credentials weighed on par with college degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a problem that a lot of companies are trying to solve for,” says Lorraine Stomski, who heads Walmart’s learning and leadership programs. “What are the rules of the future?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "new-climate-legislation-could-create-9-million-jobs-will-students-be-ready-to-fill-them",
"title": "New Climate Legislation Could Create 9 Million Jobs. Will Students Be Ready to Fill Them?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This opinion column about green jobs was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for their \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">higher education newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden touted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as “ the most significant investment ever in climate change. Ever. Lowering utility bills, creating American jobs, leading the world to a clean energy future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he didn’t mention any new investment in education to help people fill all those jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The nearly $400 billion in new spending in the IRA, the climate and health bill signed into law by President Biden in August, will create 537,000 jobs annually for the next decade, according to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://tmsnrt.rs/3inuFJL\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">an analysis by BW Research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> commissioned by the Nature Conservancy. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that doesn’t include jobs created by private investment, likely to be stimulated by the tax incentives in the bill. Adding in the jobs created by private investment likely to be stimulated by the tax incentives in the bill, the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that the Inflation Reduction Act will produce more than\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/site/9-million-good-jobs-from-climate-action-the-inflation-reduction-act/\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">9 million new jobs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> over the next decade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Green jobs were trending up even before the IRA passed last fall. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LinkedIn \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/economicgraph/en-us/global-green-skills-report/global-green-skills-report-pdf/li-green-economy-report-2022.pdf\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reported\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in 2022 that in the previous five years, U.S. jobs in renewable energy and the environment posted to its platform grew by 237 percent, while oil and gas jobs grew just 19 percent. Renewables and environment jobs on LinkedIn are on pace to outnumber oil and gas jobs later this year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LinkedIn is also tracking “green skills” that are increasingly being listed for industries not traditionally thought of as related to the climate at all, like sustainable sourcing and waste reduction in fashion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This new economy will need to be powered by people. People with skills that, today, they largely don’t have, ready for opportunities they may not know about yet, don’t know how to train for or don’t see themselves in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The hard truth is that right now we are nowhere close to having sufficient green talent, green skills or green jobs to deliver the green transition,” the LinkedIn report states. “Based on the current trajectory of green skills growth in the labour market, we are not going to have sufficient human capital to meet our climate targets.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I spoke to education and workforce leaders about what we need to do to fill the gap. Here’s what they said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>1. Invest in green job pathways \u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although huge amounts of public and private investment are thundering toward these greener pastures, education and workforce experts say very little of it is dedicated toward building up the human capital that will be needed to do the work. Union apprenticeship programs often have waiting lists, high school career and technical programs have been neglected for decades in favor of the college track, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/23/state-funding-two-year-colleges-declined-year-while-four-year-colleges-saw-small-dip\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">many community colleges\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are facing budget cuts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If we could expand our programs by 80 percent tomorrow, we would fill every single one of our seats,” said Pedro Rivera, the president of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a public technical college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which currently enrolls roughly 1,300 students and expects 1,500 next school year. Among the skills students can learn in its programs are how to monitor water quality, repair electric vehicles and install hyperefficient electric heating and cooling systems. But this kind of hands-on learning is expensive. “The only thing keeping us at the 1,500 number is the cost of building labs and materials and the supply chain itself,” Rivera said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of the immediate needs for jobs in a greening economy are in the trades — \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">fast-growing jobs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like wind turbine technician and solar panel installer, and traditional trades like electrician and construction worker. These are areas the United States has long neglected, said green entrepreneur Sam Steyer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s a huge shortage across the trades and there’s going to be even more,” he said. His startup, Greenwork, is trying to fill the gap by helping climate-focused companies contract with existing skilled laborers, and provide these experienced workers some help preparing for green-energy jobs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The country needs a lot more investment to both support and entice people to enter the trades, Steyer said. “We need to make the trades great jobs and invest more nonprofit money in supporting people through apprenticeship. It’s a financial and emotional gantlet when they’re trying to get through and stick with it.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>2. Reduce stigma\u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Part of pulling more people into “great jobs,” said Steyer, is increasing respect for the trades. This includes targeting idealistic young people who care about the climate but may not have considered working with their hands. His own team of software engineers and startup types volunteer with a Bay Area nonprofit, SunWork, doing rooftop solar and solar heat pump installations on some weekends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s frustrating being the best-kept secret,” said Rivera of Thaddeus Stevens, especially when that secret could benefit others: The school he leads has a job placement rate in the high 90s, and the jobs have livable wages. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We struggle with the old trades stigma from a lifetime ago,” Rivera said. Although these attitudes might be \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.the74million.org/poll-nearly-half-of-parents-rethinking-value-of-four-year-college-want-alternatives-for-children/\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">starting to change\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a 2020 poll found 54 percent of parents would ideally have their child attend a four-year college, and only 16 percent would want them to enter a hands-on field such as automotive repair. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>3. Increase outreach\u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Julia Hatton is with Rising Sun Opportunity, a nonprofit in Oakland, California. The group’s Opportunity Build program helps formerly incarcerated and other adults underrepresented in the trades, especially women, enter trade apprenticeships. It offers participants a year of support pre- and post-apprenticeship. Their Climate Careers program. which has been around since 2000, employs 15- through 22-year-olds to help improve energy efficiency in homes in low-income communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hatton said people need help to even understand what opportunities are out there. “In our region there are 28 building trades union affiliates. Each has their own entry requirements and specializations. How would you possibly know which one is for you?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The City University of New York is trying a novel approach to pull more students into climate-related jobs: It enlists students to educate their peers. “We’ve had fantastic students, and what you really hear from them is a desire to do good, to make a contribution,” said Mindy Engle-Friedman at Baruch College, director of CUNY’s Climate Scholars program.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The program chooses students from four different colleges in the CUNY system, across different disciplines, from finance to journalism to waste management, to participate in a yearlong fellowship. These scholars do research in CUNY labs, complete an internship and learn about climate impacts and decarbonizing the economy from experts across sectors and even from other countries. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then they share their findings, including climate job opportunities, in presentations to some 2,500 first-year Baruch students, as well as to middle and high school students. Along with the facts about jobs, the Climate Scholars are communicating their enthusiasm about the mission of preserving a livable future. It’s a message that needs to be amplified many times over to meet the need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This column about green jobs was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">higher education newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The Inflation Reduction Act could create millions of climate and green energy jobs, but workers need new skills to fill them.",
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"title": "New Climate Legislation Could Create 9 Million Jobs. Will Students Be Ready to Fill Them? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This opinion column about green jobs was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for their \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">higher education newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden touted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as “ the most significant investment ever in climate change. Ever. Lowering utility bills, creating American jobs, leading the world to a clean energy future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he didn’t mention any new investment in education to help people fill all those jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The nearly $400 billion in new spending in the IRA, the climate and health bill signed into law by President Biden in August, will create 537,000 jobs annually for the next decade, according to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://tmsnrt.rs/3inuFJL\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">an analysis by BW Research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> commissioned by the Nature Conservancy. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that doesn’t include jobs created by private investment, likely to be stimulated by the tax incentives in the bill. Adding in the jobs created by private investment likely to be stimulated by the tax incentives in the bill, the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that the Inflation Reduction Act will produce more than\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/site/9-million-good-jobs-from-climate-action-the-inflation-reduction-act/\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">9 million new jobs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> over the next decade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Green jobs were trending up even before the IRA passed last fall. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LinkedIn \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/economicgraph/en-us/global-green-skills-report/global-green-skills-report-pdf/li-green-economy-report-2022.pdf\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reported\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in 2022 that in the previous five years, U.S. jobs in renewable energy and the environment posted to its platform grew by 237 percent, while oil and gas jobs grew just 19 percent. Renewables and environment jobs on LinkedIn are on pace to outnumber oil and gas jobs later this year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LinkedIn is also tracking “green skills” that are increasingly being listed for industries not traditionally thought of as related to the climate at all, like sustainable sourcing and waste reduction in fashion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This new economy will need to be powered by people. People with skills that, today, they largely don’t have, ready for opportunities they may not know about yet, don’t know how to train for or don’t see themselves in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The hard truth is that right now we are nowhere close to having sufficient green talent, green skills or green jobs to deliver the green transition,” the LinkedIn report states. “Based on the current trajectory of green skills growth in the labour market, we are not going to have sufficient human capital to meet our climate targets.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I spoke to education and workforce leaders about what we need to do to fill the gap. Here’s what they said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>1. Invest in green job pathways \u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although huge amounts of public and private investment are thundering toward these greener pastures, education and workforce experts say very little of it is dedicated toward building up the human capital that will be needed to do the work. Union apprenticeship programs often have waiting lists, high school career and technical programs have been neglected for decades in favor of the college track, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/23/state-funding-two-year-colleges-declined-year-while-four-year-colleges-saw-small-dip\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">many community colleges\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are facing budget cuts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If we could expand our programs by 80 percent tomorrow, we would fill every single one of our seats,” said Pedro Rivera, the president of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a public technical college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which currently enrolls roughly 1,300 students and expects 1,500 next school year. Among the skills students can learn in its programs are how to monitor water quality, repair electric vehicles and install hyperefficient electric heating and cooling systems. But this kind of hands-on learning is expensive. “The only thing keeping us at the 1,500 number is the cost of building labs and materials and the supply chain itself,” Rivera said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of the immediate needs for jobs in a greening economy are in the trades — \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">fast-growing jobs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like wind turbine technician and solar panel installer, and traditional trades like electrician and construction worker. These are areas the United States has long neglected, said green entrepreneur Sam Steyer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s a huge shortage across the trades and there’s going to be even more,” he said. His startup, Greenwork, is trying to fill the gap by helping climate-focused companies contract with existing skilled laborers, and provide these experienced workers some help preparing for green-energy jobs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The country needs a lot more investment to both support and entice people to enter the trades, Steyer said. “We need to make the trades great jobs and invest more nonprofit money in supporting people through apprenticeship. It’s a financial and emotional gantlet when they’re trying to get through and stick with it.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>2. Reduce stigma\u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Part of pulling more people into “great jobs,” said Steyer, is increasing respect for the trades. This includes targeting idealistic young people who care about the climate but may not have considered working with their hands. His own team of software engineers and startup types volunteer with a Bay Area nonprofit, SunWork, doing rooftop solar and solar heat pump installations on some weekends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s frustrating being the best-kept secret,” said Rivera of Thaddeus Stevens, especially when that secret could benefit others: The school he leads has a job placement rate in the high 90s, and the jobs have livable wages. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We struggle with the old trades stigma from a lifetime ago,” Rivera said. Although these attitudes might be \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.the74million.org/poll-nearly-half-of-parents-rethinking-value-of-four-year-college-want-alternatives-for-children/\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">starting to change\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a 2020 poll found 54 percent of parents would ideally have their child attend a four-year college, and only 16 percent would want them to enter a hands-on field such as automotive repair. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>3. Increase outreach\u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Julia Hatton is with Rising Sun Opportunity, a nonprofit in Oakland, California. The group’s Opportunity Build program helps formerly incarcerated and other adults underrepresented in the trades, especially women, enter trade apprenticeships. It offers participants a year of support pre- and post-apprenticeship. Their Climate Careers program. which has been around since 2000, employs 15- through 22-year-olds to help improve energy efficiency in homes in low-income communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hatton said people need help to even understand what opportunities are out there. “In our region there are 28 building trades union affiliates. Each has their own entry requirements and specializations. How would you possibly know which one is for you?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The City University of New York is trying a novel approach to pull more students into climate-related jobs: It enlists students to educate their peers. “We’ve had fantastic students, and what you really hear from them is a desire to do good, to make a contribution,” said Mindy Engle-Friedman at Baruch College, director of CUNY’s Climate Scholars program.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The program chooses students from four different colleges in the CUNY system, across different disciplines, from finance to journalism to waste management, to participate in a yearlong fellowship. These scholars do research in CUNY labs, complete an internship and learn about climate impacts and decarbonizing the economy from experts across sectors and even from other countries. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then they share their findings, including climate job opportunities, in presentations to some 2,500 first-year Baruch students, as well as to middle and high school students. Along with the facts about jobs, the Climate Scholars are communicating their enthusiasm about the mission of preserving a livable future. It’s a message that needs to be amplified many times over to meet the need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This column about green jobs was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">higher education newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "America needs carpenters and plumbers. It'll take active recruitment to get Gen Z interested.",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>Justin Mwandjalulu, 20, loves to build stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, as a carpentry apprentice, he installs drywall in houses with the rest of his construction crew. But he said he likes concrete the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"At the end of the day, you see how you poured everything. The result of your hard work,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mwandjalulu dreamed of becoming a carpenter or electrician as a child. And now he's fulfilling that dream. But that also makes him an exception to the rule. While Gen Z — often described as people born between 1997 and 2012 — is on track to become the \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/14/on-the-cusp-of-adulthood-and-facing-an-uncertain-future-what-we-know-about-gen-z-so-far-2/\">most educated generation\u003c/a>, fewer young folks are opting for traditionally hands-on jobs in the skilled trade and technical industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Gen Z interest in trades and skilled work has dropped\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The application rate for young people seeking technical jobs — like plumbing, building and electrical work — dropped by 49% in 2022 compared to 2020, according to data from online recruiting platform Handshake shared with NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers from Handshake tracked how the number of applications for technical roles vs. the number of job postings has changed over the last two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While postings for those roles — automotive technicians, equipment installers and respiratory therapists, to name a few — saw on average 10 applications each in 2020, they got about five per posting in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The typical rate is about 19 applications per job on Handshake, according to Christine Cruzvergara, the company's chief education strategy officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the creation of technical positions has continued to grow, the number of students interested in applying for them — hasn't.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occupations such as auto technician with aging workforces have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warning of a \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.uschamber.com/economy/what-to-expect-for-the-economy-in-2023\">massive\u003c/a>\" shortage of skilled workers in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"For a long time, our society has not talked favorably about the skilled trades,\" said Cruzvergara. \"We've instead encouraged students to all go to college, all go to four-year institutions, graduate, go out into white collar jobs.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>One path does not fit all\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Mwandjalulu, who lives in Iowa City, Iowa and is in his second year of a four-year carpentry apprenticeship, found school difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He immigrated with his family to the United States from Benin, Africa, when he was a freshman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Man, it was hard,\" he said. While his twin brother, now studying to work in banking, excelled, Mwandjalulu said he struggled with writing and English.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm not the type of guy that likes being in the same spot all day long, dealing with papers and stuff,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around high school graduation, Mwandjalulu said he got depressed because he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. Many of his older friends who went to college and graduated were struggling to find jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I didn't want to look like them,\" he said. \"I didn't want to just spend money and have a lot of loans and not use my papers,\" he said, referring to a degree and a diploma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the Department of Education, about 45 million people in the United States owe nearly $1.3 trillion in student debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mwandjalulu, who makes nearly $24 an hour as a carpenter, said he's still had trouble convincing his friends, whom he keeps in touch with on Facebook and Snapchat, to follow his path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There's not a lot of people, especially immigrants, that think outside of school,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The narrative is shifting\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Paul Iversen, a labor educator with University of Iowa's Labor Center, hopes to change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iversen, who helps helps run a pre-apprenticeship program, said one of the reasons participation in the skilled trades is low among Gen Z is because the work was once typically passed down in families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It used to be word-of-mouth,\" said Iversen. \"But there's more of a need for carpenters, pipefitters, plumbers and electricians than you can fill with the family members of current people.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That reality is hitting home for farmer John Boyd Jr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boyd, 57, owns a 300-acre farm in Virginia where he grows soybeans, corn and wheat and raises cattle — just as three generations did before him. But now, none of his three children want to take over when he retires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Everybody on my farm is over the age of 50,\" said Boyd, who is the president of the National Black Farmers' Association. \"We need some young people with some energy and hustle and innovation.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Coleman, 28, is one of them. He received a scholarship from the NBFA in 2015 to study animal science at Alcorn State University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coleman is now an animal health technician with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and owns his own farm. But, at times, he's found it a lonely field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average age of a U.S. farmer is 57.5, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, up from 54.9 in 2007, and Coleman said he's only met a couple other farmers around his age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We kind of stick together,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>There is plenty of need\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>But Coleman said he's seen more young people express interest in agribusiness and other technical industries, particularly after the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Especially with student loans and everything, it's a lot cheaper to get a trade and make a lot of money,\" said Coleman. Most young folks just haven't had people show them the ropes,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The median salary for carpenters in 2021 was $48,260 per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, that figure was $59,880, and for farmers, ranchers and agricultural managers, $73,060.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, filling trade and technical jobs takes active recruitment, said Iversen, who pays frequent visits to high schools around Iowa City and works with school counselors to place students in the pre-apprenticeship program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now especially, there's an urgency to fill open posts, said Iversen, as the federal government \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1055841358/biden-signs-1t-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-into-law\">funnels billions into projects to upgrade roads and transit systems\u003c/a> across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have to recruit people to do these things or else our bridges are going to fall apart,\" Iversen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=America+needs+carpenters+and+plumbers.+Gen+Z+doesn%27t+seem+interested&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Baby boomers are aging out of jobs they long dominated like builders, farmers and mechanics. But skilled trades and technical jobs haven't caught on with Gen Z.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Justin Mwandjalulu, 20, loves to build stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, as a carpentry apprentice, he installs drywall in houses with the rest of his construction crew. But he said he likes concrete the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"At the end of the day, you see how you poured everything. The result of your hard work,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mwandjalulu dreamed of becoming a carpenter or electrician as a child. And now he's fulfilling that dream. But that also makes him an exception to the rule. While Gen Z — often described as people born between 1997 and 2012 — is on track to become the \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/14/on-the-cusp-of-adulthood-and-facing-an-uncertain-future-what-we-know-about-gen-z-so-far-2/\">most educated generation\u003c/a>, fewer young folks are opting for traditionally hands-on jobs in the skilled trade and technical industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Gen Z interest in trades and skilled work has dropped\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The application rate for young people seeking technical jobs — like plumbing, building and electrical work — dropped by 49% in 2022 compared to 2020, according to data from online recruiting platform Handshake shared with NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers from Handshake tracked how the number of applications for technical roles vs. the number of job postings has changed over the last two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While postings for those roles — automotive technicians, equipment installers and respiratory therapists, to name a few — saw on average 10 applications each in 2020, they got about five per posting in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The typical rate is about 19 applications per job on Handshake, according to Christine Cruzvergara, the company's chief education strategy officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the creation of technical positions has continued to grow, the number of students interested in applying for them — hasn't.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occupations such as auto technician with aging workforces have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warning of a \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.uschamber.com/economy/what-to-expect-for-the-economy-in-2023\">massive\u003c/a>\" shortage of skilled workers in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"For a long time, our society has not talked favorably about the skilled trades,\" said Cruzvergara. \"We've instead encouraged students to all go to college, all go to four-year institutions, graduate, go out into white collar jobs.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>One path does not fit all\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Mwandjalulu, who lives in Iowa City, Iowa and is in his second year of a four-year carpentry apprenticeship, found school difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He immigrated with his family to the United States from Benin, Africa, when he was a freshman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Man, it was hard,\" he said. While his twin brother, now studying to work in banking, excelled, Mwandjalulu said he struggled with writing and English.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm not the type of guy that likes being in the same spot all day long, dealing with papers and stuff,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around high school graduation, Mwandjalulu said he got depressed because he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. Many of his older friends who went to college and graduated were struggling to find jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I didn't want to look like them,\" he said. \"I didn't want to just spend money and have a lot of loans and not use my papers,\" he said, referring to a degree and a diploma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the Department of Education, about 45 million people in the United States owe nearly $1.3 trillion in student debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mwandjalulu, who makes nearly $24 an hour as a carpenter, said he's still had trouble convincing his friends, whom he keeps in touch with on Facebook and Snapchat, to follow his path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There's not a lot of people, especially immigrants, that think outside of school,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The narrative is shifting\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Paul Iversen, a labor educator with University of Iowa's Labor Center, hopes to change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iversen, who helps helps run a pre-apprenticeship program, said one of the reasons participation in the skilled trades is low among Gen Z is because the work was once typically passed down in families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It used to be word-of-mouth,\" said Iversen. \"But there's more of a need for carpenters, pipefitters, plumbers and electricians than you can fill with the family members of current people.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That reality is hitting home for farmer John Boyd Jr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boyd, 57, owns a 300-acre farm in Virginia where he grows soybeans, corn and wheat and raises cattle — just as three generations did before him. But now, none of his three children want to take over when he retires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Everybody on my farm is over the age of 50,\" said Boyd, who is the president of the National Black Farmers' Association. \"We need some young people with some energy and hustle and innovation.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Coleman, 28, is one of them. He received a scholarship from the NBFA in 2015 to study animal science at Alcorn State University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coleman is now an animal health technician with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and owns his own farm. But, at times, he's found it a lonely field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average age of a U.S. farmer is 57.5, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, up from 54.9 in 2007, and Coleman said he's only met a couple other farmers around his age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We kind of stick together,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>There is plenty of need\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>But Coleman said he's seen more young people express interest in agribusiness and other technical industries, particularly after the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Especially with student loans and everything, it's a lot cheaper to get a trade and make a lot of money,\" said Coleman. Most young folks just haven't had people show them the ropes,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The median salary for carpenters in 2021 was $48,260 per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, that figure was $59,880, and for farmers, ranchers and agricultural managers, $73,060.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, filling trade and technical jobs takes active recruitment, said Iversen, who pays frequent visits to high schools around Iowa City and works with school counselors to place students in the pre-apprenticeship program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now especially, there's an urgency to fill open posts, said Iversen, as the federal government \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1055841358/biden-signs-1t-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-into-law\">funnels billions into projects to upgrade roads and transit systems\u003c/a> across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have to recruit people to do these things or else our bridges are going to fall apart,\" Iversen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=America+needs+carpenters+and+plumbers.+Gen+Z+doesn%27t+seem+interested&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "More school districts are starting career education early, aiming to widen kids' horizons",
"title": "More school districts are starting career education early, aiming to widen kids' horizons",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DALLAS — In Levar Dobbins’ eighth grade classroom, a dozen students were learning about workforce trends.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What do you think the future job market will look like?” Dobbins asked the class, at Piedmont GLOBAL Academy, a majority-Hispanic middle school in southeastern Dallas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A whole bunch of robots,” one boy suggested.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“More social media platforms,” a girl said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dobbins then led his students in a discussion about how current events like the pandemic are shaping the nation’s workforce, and why Dallas’ economy is booming (a fact that surprised some students). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Jobs will continue to evolve,” Dobbins told them. “If you told someone a decade ago that you could have a career as a social media influencer, they wouldn’t have believed you.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60366\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-60366 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1020x1360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Levar Dobbins, a teacher at Piedmont GLOBAL Academy, shows off some student posters highlighting careers they’re interested in. \u003ccite>(Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Preparing students for a changing workforce is one of the goals behind a movement to get kids thinking about their career plans at a younger age. A growing number of states and school districts now require students to take career exploration classes in middle school. Others offer introductory courses in specific careers, like engineering or robotics.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dallas Independent School District, the second-largest district in the nation’s second-largest state, has long offered career exploration courses to its seventh and eighth graders. But this year it expanded one of the classes, based on a curriculum from the nonprofit Education Opens Doors, to every middle school in the district. Brian Lusk, the district’s chief of strategic initiatives, said school leaders wanted to ensure that all students were prepared to make informed decisions about their paths in high school and beyond. “Equity is important to us,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Advocates argue that exposing students to potential careers in middle school, rather than waiting until high school, gives them time to take the classes and extracurriculars that will get them to their goals — and the opportunity to change course while the stakes are still low.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Students are less stressed out in the middle grades,” said Stephanie Simpson, CEO of the Association for Middle Level Education, a nonprofit that supports middle school educators. “They can explore and take some risks, with fewer immediate consequences.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Showing students a route to their dreams in early adolescence — a time when many begin to lose interest in school — can also boost middle schoolers’ motivation, advocates say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the effort to push career exploration down into the middle grades faces several challenges, including a lack of funding, a shortage of school counselors and packed school schedules that leave little time for “extras” like career exploration. The work has also raised concerns about “tracking,” the now-discredited practice of steering certain students, particularly those who are low-income and Black or Hispanic, into vocational tracks that lead to low-wage jobs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proponents of career exploration in middle school say they’re not out to narrow students’ options, but to broaden them. The aim is to introduce young people to careers they might not otherwise hear of, and arm them with the tools to pursue college, if they want to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re not pushing them onto a path so much as giving them the ability to choose which path they go down,” said Roscoe Compton-Kelly, CEO of Education Opens Doors. A recent evaluation of its program found that students who participated were more likely to take the ACT and AP exams than their peers who did not. “We’re giving them the knowledge to make the decisions for themselves,” he added. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Education Opens Doors began pitching its program to Texas schools a decade ago, the biggest question from school leaders was, “Is it too soon?” said Jeff McGuire, the group’s director of communications. Were early adolescents, with their raging hormones and still-developing frontal lobes, really ready to plan for a future that may feel light-years away? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nancy Deutsch, a University of Virginia professor who is leading an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://education.virginia.edu/faculty-research/centers-labs-projects/youth-nex/remaking-middle-school\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">effort\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to remake middle schools, thinks they are. The early teen years may even be the ideal time to start, she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Early adolescence is such a huge time for identity development, when young people are asking, ‘Who am I, and who do I want to be?’ “ said Deutsch, the director of Youth-Nex: The UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development. Career exploration capitalizes on this innate drive, encouraging students to try on possible future selves, she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The early teen years are also a stage when students are especially vulnerable to “identity foreclosure,” or the walling off of certain options, such as a STEM career, as not for them, Deutsch said. By catching students before they foreclose, schools may be able to convince more female students to consider computer science, for example.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are practical reasons to start sooner, too. With the growth of specialized high schools and the expansion of career-focused programs in comprehensive schools, students today are being asked as early as 13 or 14 to make decisions that could shape their future careers. In Dallas, eighth graders must choose one of five “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dallasisd.org/Page/38480\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">endorsements\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” to focus on in high school — among them, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math); business and industry; and the arts and humanities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“High school is far too late to begin this conversation with young people,” said Kyle Hartung, an associate vice president with Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that offers a career exploration curriculum for schools and after-school programs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students seem to agree. In a pair of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://file.asa.org/uploads/Middle-School-Career-Exploration-Grants-Outcomes-White-Paper-FINAL.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">recent surveys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by American Student Assistance, a nonprofit focused on career readiness, roughly two-thirds of high school graduates said they would have benefited from more career exploration in middle or high school, and 80 percent of high school guidance counselors said their students were “overwhelmed” by decisions about college and career. (American Student Assistance is one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some states are getting the message. Indiana now requires all eighth graders to take a series of self-assessments through the state’s\u003c/span> \u003ca href=\"https://www.in.gov/doe/students/college-and-career-navigation/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">online career explorer\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">or a similar web \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> tool\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The results are shared with guidance counselors, who help students match their interests, strengths and values with one of three paths: employment, enrollment or enlistment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60368\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-60368\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas6-scaled-e1668811017161.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students in a seventh grade classroom at The Young Men’s Leadership Academy in Dallas research potential careers on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. \u003ccite>(Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Delaware, meanwhile, is in the process of writing standards for career and technical education in the middle grades, after finding that middle schoolers are often making uninformed decisions about which high school to attend. And Virginia has kids begin work on an “academic and career plan portfolio,” which includes information about their interests, values and skills, as early as elementary school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Education Opens Doors was created by Jayda Batchelder, an eighth grade science teacher who grew up not knowing much about the road to college herself. A first-generation student, she had landed at Tulane with a scholarship “by pure luck,” she recalled in an interview: The elite college’s recruiters wanted someone from South Dakota, and she fit the bill. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a first-year Teach for America corps member in Dallas, in the 2009-10 school year, Batchelder had been named a teacher of the year. Her students had shone on the state standardized test, and she “really felt I’d changed their trajectory,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when she visited some of her former students the next fall, at a high school football game, she found many of them were making choices that could limit their futures. The brightest students were enrolling in the lowest-level courses, while students who had excelled in her science class weren’t taking STEM courses. It was, for Batchelder, a moment of epiphany.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re telling our kids they can be anything, do anything, but no one is teaching them how,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That weekend, in October 2010, she sent an e-mail to all the Teach for America members in Dallas with a proposal to create a “roadmap for success” for middle schoolers. Four teachers agreed to help. After two years of piloting the curricula in Dallas schools, Batchelder received a $5,000 prize for being named science teacher of the year and used the money to launch a nonprofit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At first, the organization struggled to secure funding. Foundation leaders said they’d support the nonprofit if it focused on high school, and funders and some school leaders worried about the potential for tracking. Some teachers were skeptical, too, wondering, “How much work is this going to be for me on top of the work I already have?” McGuire said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Batchelder turned down the grants pegged to high school, and reassured skeptics that all students would be educated about all potential pathways to a career. If anything, the early curricula was probably biased in favor of a four-year education, Batchelder said: “We probably overcompensated.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years since, the program has undergone multiple revisions; its workbook has been fully digitized and made more engaging, with online games and quizzes. There’s less “sage on the stage” — teacher lecture — and more discussion and debate. And there’s more information about alternative pathways, including the military, apprenticeships and technical school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We don’t want kids who have goals other than a traditional college to feel like ‘this has nothing to do with me,’ ” said Kristen Pereira, the group’s senior curriculum specialist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a recent class at The Young Men’s Leadership Academy at Fred F. Florence Middle School in southeastern Dallas, Katherine Coney, a teacher, showed students a slide reminding them that “you don’t have to attend college to have a career.” Industry-based certification and licensure is another route, it read. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I want you to go to college, if that’s what you want, but you have other options,” Coney said. “What we don’t want is for you to work at Burger King for 30 years, trying to support your family.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Levar Dobbins, the Piedmont middle school teacher, said he learned about college by watching “A Different World,” a spinoff of ”The Cosby Show” that focused on the life of students at a fictional historically Black college. When he was growing up, “college was a big abstract thing — a pennant, or a football team,” said Dobbins, now 42. “A Different World” made it concrete, imaginable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While today’s students have access to much more information about college and careers via the Internet, many still have limited notions about what they can become, Dobbins said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To expand their horizons, Dobbins and other teachers have students research careers on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website — looking up information about job duties, education requirements, starting salaries and job outlook. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students also spend time conducting inventories of their own skills and strengths. In a recent seventh grade class at Eduardo Mata Montessori School, students wrote down three skills they would stress to an employer in a job interview. Daniel Gonzalez wrote that he is brave, creative and has a strong mindset. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Daniel said he really wants to be a professional basketball player, but engineering is his back-up plan. “I’ll probably go to college, because after a while, I’ll be too old to play,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lusk said the district hasn’t gotten much pushback from teachers about the program, in part because it doesn’t add to their workload. When Dallas took the program districtwide, it made it a stand-alone course, and assigned teachers to teach it. “It’s their course,” he said. “It’s not an add-on.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The district paid for the program — which costs schools $50 to $100 per student, depending on the level of support teachers receive — using federal economic recovery dollars, and will cover the costs once those funds run out, Lusk said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In other districts, though, a lack of funding and “initiative fatigue” have sometimes thwarted efforts to extend career exploration to the middle grades, said Simpson of the Association for Middle Level Education. “We’re asking so much of our educators, this feels like one more thing,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">School counselors, who might also be tapped to teach the material, are similarly stretched, with the average public school counselor overseeing \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.schoolcounselor.org/About-School-Counseling/School-Counselor-Roles-Ratios\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">415 students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, far more than the 250 maximum recommended by the American School Counselor Association. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time, pressures to improve test scores have led some schools to spend more of the day on core academic subjects, and less on “specials,” like career exploration.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All these factors have led Jean Eddy, the CEO of American Student Assistance, to conclude that while career exploration in the classroom works, it can’t be scaled nationally. The nonprofit, which has funded successful school-based programs in the past, is now shifting its resources to apps it has developed to help kids explore careers on their own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This generation wants agency — they want to be able to direct their own learning,” Eddy said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hartung, of Jobs for the Future, said efforts to educate students about their options won’t succeed without improvements in the school-to-workforce pipeline. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Right now, the systems are very siloed,” he said. “The Achilles’ heel of this work is that it’s early preparation for young people without a system to advance through.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But in Dallas, at least, the push to start career exploration sooner seems to be making a difference. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bianca Escobar, a high school senior who took the Education Opens Doors course in middle school, said she still turns to her student guidebook when she’s feeling lost or scared about the future. She wants to study engineering in California, and recently returned from a road trip to the state, where she visited four colleges. Her favorite was the University of San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I feel really confident in my choices and the things I need to do to prepare,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/the-path-to-a-career-could-start-in-middle-school/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">middle school career education\u003c/a> was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DALLAS — In Levar Dobbins’ eighth grade classroom, a dozen students were learning about workforce trends.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“What do you think the future job market will look like?” Dobbins asked the class, at Piedmont GLOBAL Academy, a majority-Hispanic middle school in southeastern Dallas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“A whole bunch of robots,” one boy suggested.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“More social media platforms,” a girl said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dobbins then led his students in a discussion about how current events like the pandemic are shaping the nation’s workforce, and why Dallas’ economy is booming (a fact that surprised some students). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Jobs will continue to evolve,” Dobbins told them. “If you told someone a decade ago that you could have a career as a social media influencer, they wouldn’t have believed you.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60366\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-60366 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1020x1360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas4-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Levar Dobbins, a teacher at Piedmont GLOBAL Academy, shows off some student posters highlighting careers they’re interested in. \u003ccite>(Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Preparing students for a changing workforce is one of the goals behind a movement to get kids thinking about their career plans at a younger age. A growing number of states and school districts now require students to take career exploration classes in middle school. Others offer introductory courses in specific careers, like engineering or robotics.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dallas Independent School District, the second-largest district in the nation’s second-largest state, has long offered career exploration courses to its seventh and eighth graders. But this year it expanded one of the classes, based on a curriculum from the nonprofit Education Opens Doors, to every middle school in the district. Brian Lusk, the district’s chief of strategic initiatives, said school leaders wanted to ensure that all students were prepared to make informed decisions about their paths in high school and beyond. “Equity is important to us,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Advocates argue that exposing students to potential careers in middle school, rather than waiting until high school, gives them time to take the classes and extracurriculars that will get them to their goals — and the opportunity to change course while the stakes are still low.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Students are less stressed out in the middle grades,” said Stephanie Simpson, CEO of the Association for Middle Level Education, a nonprofit that supports middle school educators. “They can explore and take some risks, with fewer immediate consequences.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Showing students a route to their dreams in early adolescence — a time when many begin to lose interest in school — can also boost middle schoolers’ motivation, advocates say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the effort to push career exploration down into the middle grades faces several challenges, including a lack of funding, a shortage of school counselors and packed school schedules that leave little time for “extras” like career exploration. The work has also raised concerns about “tracking,” the now-discredited practice of steering certain students, particularly those who are low-income and Black or Hispanic, into vocational tracks that lead to low-wage jobs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proponents of career exploration in middle school say they’re not out to narrow students’ options, but to broaden them. The aim is to introduce young people to careers they might not otherwise hear of, and arm them with the tools to pursue college, if they want to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re not pushing them onto a path so much as giving them the ability to choose which path they go down,” said Roscoe Compton-Kelly, CEO of Education Opens Doors. A recent evaluation of its program found that students who participated were more likely to take the ACT and AP exams than their peers who did not. “We’re giving them the knowledge to make the decisions for themselves,” he added. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Education Opens Doors began pitching its program to Texas schools a decade ago, the biggest question from school leaders was, “Is it too soon?” said Jeff McGuire, the group’s director of communications. Were early adolescents, with their raging hormones and still-developing frontal lobes, really ready to plan for a future that may feel light-years away? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nancy Deutsch, a University of Virginia professor who is leading an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://education.virginia.edu/faculty-research/centers-labs-projects/youth-nex/remaking-middle-school\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">effort\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to remake middle schools, thinks they are. The early teen years may even be the ideal time to start, she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Early adolescence is such a huge time for identity development, when young people are asking, ‘Who am I, and who do I want to be?’ “ said Deutsch, the director of Youth-Nex: The UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development. Career exploration capitalizes on this innate drive, encouraging students to try on possible future selves, she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The early teen years are also a stage when students are especially vulnerable to “identity foreclosure,” or the walling off of certain options, such as a STEM career, as not for them, Deutsch said. By catching students before they foreclose, schools may be able to convince more female students to consider computer science, for example.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are practical reasons to start sooner, too. With the growth of specialized high schools and the expansion of career-focused programs in comprehensive schools, students today are being asked as early as 13 or 14 to make decisions that could shape their future careers. In Dallas, eighth graders must choose one of five “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dallasisd.org/Page/38480\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">endorsements\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” to focus on in high school — among them, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math); business and industry; and the arts and humanities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“High school is far too late to begin this conversation with young people,” said Kyle Hartung, an associate vice president with Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that offers a career exploration curriculum for schools and after-school programs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students seem to agree. In a pair of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://file.asa.org/uploads/Middle-School-Career-Exploration-Grants-Outcomes-White-Paper-FINAL.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">recent surveys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by American Student Assistance, a nonprofit focused on career readiness, roughly two-thirds of high school graduates said they would have benefited from more career exploration in middle or high school, and 80 percent of high school guidance counselors said their students were “overwhelmed” by decisions about college and career. (American Student Assistance is one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some states are getting the message. Indiana now requires all eighth graders to take a series of self-assessments through the state’s\u003c/span> \u003ca href=\"https://www.in.gov/doe/students/college-and-career-navigation/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">online career explorer\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">or a similar web \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> tool\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The results are shared with guidance counselors, who help students match their interests, strengths and values with one of three paths: employment, enrollment or enlistment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60368\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-60368\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Kelly-Green-Dallas6-scaled-e1668811017161.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students in a seventh grade classroom at The Young Men’s Leadership Academy in Dallas research potential careers on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. \u003ccite>(Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Delaware, meanwhile, is in the process of writing standards for career and technical education in the middle grades, after finding that middle schoolers are often making uninformed decisions about which high school to attend. And Virginia has kids begin work on an “academic and career plan portfolio,” which includes information about their interests, values and skills, as early as elementary school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Education Opens Doors was created by Jayda Batchelder, an eighth grade science teacher who grew up not knowing much about the road to college herself. A first-generation student, she had landed at Tulane with a scholarship “by pure luck,” she recalled in an interview: The elite college’s recruiters wanted someone from South Dakota, and she fit the bill. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a first-year Teach for America corps member in Dallas, in the 2009-10 school year, Batchelder had been named a teacher of the year. Her students had shone on the state standardized test, and she “really felt I’d changed their trajectory,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when she visited some of her former students the next fall, at a high school football game, she found many of them were making choices that could limit their futures. The brightest students were enrolling in the lowest-level courses, while students who had excelled in her science class weren’t taking STEM courses. It was, for Batchelder, a moment of epiphany.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re telling our kids they can be anything, do anything, but no one is teaching them how,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That weekend, in October 2010, she sent an e-mail to all the Teach for America members in Dallas with a proposal to create a “roadmap for success” for middle schoolers. Four teachers agreed to help. After two years of piloting the curricula in Dallas schools, Batchelder received a $5,000 prize for being named science teacher of the year and used the money to launch a nonprofit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At first, the organization struggled to secure funding. Foundation leaders said they’d support the nonprofit if it focused on high school, and funders and some school leaders worried about the potential for tracking. Some teachers were skeptical, too, wondering, “How much work is this going to be for me on top of the work I already have?” McGuire said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Batchelder turned down the grants pegged to high school, and reassured skeptics that all students would be educated about all potential pathways to a career. If anything, the early curricula was probably biased in favor of a four-year education, Batchelder said: “We probably overcompensated.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years since, the program has undergone multiple revisions; its workbook has been fully digitized and made more engaging, with online games and quizzes. There’s less “sage on the stage” — teacher lecture — and more discussion and debate. And there’s more information about alternative pathways, including the military, apprenticeships and technical school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We don’t want kids who have goals other than a traditional college to feel like ‘this has nothing to do with me,’ ” said Kristen Pereira, the group’s senior curriculum specialist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a recent class at The Young Men’s Leadership Academy at Fred F. Florence Middle School in southeastern Dallas, Katherine Coney, a teacher, showed students a slide reminding them that “you don’t have to attend college to have a career.” Industry-based certification and licensure is another route, it read. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I want you to go to college, if that’s what you want, but you have other options,” Coney said. “What we don’t want is for you to work at Burger King for 30 years, trying to support your family.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Levar Dobbins, the Piedmont middle school teacher, said he learned about college by watching “A Different World,” a spinoff of ”The Cosby Show” that focused on the life of students at a fictional historically Black college. When he was growing up, “college was a big abstract thing — a pennant, or a football team,” said Dobbins, now 42. “A Different World” made it concrete, imaginable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While today’s students have access to much more information about college and careers via the Internet, many still have limited notions about what they can become, Dobbins said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To expand their horizons, Dobbins and other teachers have students research careers on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website — looking up information about job duties, education requirements, starting salaries and job outlook. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students also spend time conducting inventories of their own skills and strengths. In a recent seventh grade class at Eduardo Mata Montessori School, students wrote down three skills they would stress to an employer in a job interview. Daniel Gonzalez wrote that he is brave, creative and has a strong mindset. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Daniel said he really wants to be a professional basketball player, but engineering is his back-up plan. “I’ll probably go to college, because after a while, I’ll be too old to play,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lusk said the district hasn’t gotten much pushback from teachers about the program, in part because it doesn’t add to their workload. When Dallas took the program districtwide, it made it a stand-alone course, and assigned teachers to teach it. “It’s their course,” he said. “It’s not an add-on.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The district paid for the program — which costs schools $50 to $100 per student, depending on the level of support teachers receive — using federal economic recovery dollars, and will cover the costs once those funds run out, Lusk said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In other districts, though, a lack of funding and “initiative fatigue” have sometimes thwarted efforts to extend career exploration to the middle grades, said Simpson of the Association for Middle Level Education. “We’re asking so much of our educators, this feels like one more thing,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">School counselors, who might also be tapped to teach the material, are similarly stretched, with the average public school counselor overseeing \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.schoolcounselor.org/About-School-Counseling/School-Counselor-Roles-Ratios\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">415 students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, far more than the 250 maximum recommended by the American School Counselor Association. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time, pressures to improve test scores have led some schools to spend more of the day on core academic subjects, and less on “specials,” like career exploration.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All these factors have led Jean Eddy, the CEO of American Student Assistance, to conclude that while career exploration in the classroom works, it can’t be scaled nationally. The nonprofit, which has funded successful school-based programs in the past, is now shifting its resources to apps it has developed to help kids explore careers on their own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This generation wants agency — they want to be able to direct their own learning,” Eddy said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hartung, of Jobs for the Future, said efforts to educate students about their options won’t succeed without improvements in the school-to-workforce pipeline. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Right now, the systems are very siloed,” he said. “The Achilles’ heel of this work is that it’s early preparation for young people without a system to advance through.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But in Dallas, at least, the push to start career exploration sooner seems to be making a difference. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bianca Escobar, a high school senior who took the Education Opens Doors course in middle school, said she still turns to her student guidebook when she’s feeling lost or scared about the future. She wants to study engineering in California, and recently returned from a road trip to the state, where she visited four colleges. Her favorite was the University of San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I feel really confident in my choices and the things I need to do to prepare,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/the-path-to-a-career-could-start-in-middle-school/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">middle school career education\u003c/a> was produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite high profile stories about the closing of small liberal arts colleges, such as California’s Mills College and Vermont’s Green Mountain College, college closures have actually declined in the past five years. But the numbers may spike again as declining \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNCBRTINUSA\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">U.S. birth rates\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> soon translate into \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/college-students-predicted-to-fall-by-more-than-15-after-the-year-2025/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">fewer graduating high schoolers after 2025\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First, the numbers. Thirty-five colleges and universities shut down in 2021, a 70 percent decrease from 2016, when a peak of 120 colleges shuttered, according to an analysis of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/PEPS/index.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">federal data\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). For-profit operators ran more than 80 percent of the 861 institutions that ceased operations between 2004 and 2021. For perspective, the number of closures over the past 18 years represents almost 15 percent of the 5,860 of the colleges and universities that remain in operation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-60359 aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/barshay-graph.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"385\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/barshay-graph.png 624w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/barshay-graph-160x99.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\">“Many have closed their doors in recent years and many more may do so in the years to come,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which collaborated with SHEEO to track what happens to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/SHEEO-NSCRCCollegeClosuresReport.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">students when their colleges shut down\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Higher education administrators point out that it’s equally important to monitor individual campus closures. The closure of a branch campus can also leave students without good, nearby options for completing their degrees even when the parent institution is still operating branches elsewhere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The number of these campus closures is 11 times larger. Almost 9,500 campuses closed between 2004 and 2021. Roughly 500 were closed because of a merger or a consolidation with another college. These campuses don’t always shut down physically but students aren’t necessarily able to continue their previous studies there. The remaining 8,986 branch campus closures occurred at 2,011 different institutions. Most of them continued to operate campuses at other locations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very few of any of these closures took place at public colleges or universities. One big exception was Purdue University. It shut down four campuses after it \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/transaction-complete-for-purdue-global.html#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20Purdue%20Global%2C%20Indiana's%20newest%20public,transaction%20with%20Kaplan%20Higher%20Education.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">purchased for-profit Kaplan University in 2018 \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and converted it to a public four-year university called Purdue Global. Most other public closures were small ones, such as the closure of a teacher training site at a local elementary school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Closures happen for many reasons but generally involve declining student enrollment, which leads to diminishing tuition dollars, a main source of revenue for many colleges. Weak finances have cut off for-profit institutions from the federal student loan program. That suddenly prevents students from obtaining subsidized loans to pay their private tuition bills. Many small liberal arts colleges have struggled to attract students altogether.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The consequences for students at these shuttered campuses are enormous. Fewer than half of them ever re-enrolled in college, according to a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sheeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SHEEO_NSCRC_CollegeClosures_Report1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">November 2022 report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by SHEEO and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The two organizations collaborated on a research project tracking 143,000 students at 467 campuses that closed between 2004 and 2020. As of February 2022, only about a third of the 47 percent of students who succeeded in transferring to another campus completed a degree or a credential. More than 60 percent of the students at a shuttered campus became college dropouts, adding to the large pool of U.S. adults who have student loans and no degree.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Their schools’ closing effectively closes doors on the students’ educational dreams,” said Shapiro. “It is a serious hardship for the students.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a campus closure, students often have to apply as a transfer student to a new institution. Shapiro explained that it’s difficult for students to find a college that will accept all the credits that they’ve already earned. It’s even more challenging to find a college with a similar degree program or major without having to start over again with new prerequisites. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Burns, senior policy analyst at SHEEO, is urging state regulators to make sure all colleges have contingency plans, known as “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nwccu.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Teach-Out-Plans-and-Teach-Out-Agreements-Policy.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">teach-out plans\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” in place so that students are automatically transferred with all of their accumulated credits to another institution. That will be even more important as SHEEO predicts sharp declines in student enrollment and tuition revenue in the years ahead. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-861-colleges-and-9499-campuses-have-closed-down-since-2004/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">colleges closing\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletter.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite high profile stories about the closing of small liberal arts colleges, such as California’s Mills College and Vermont’s Green Mountain College, college closures have actually declined in the past five years. But the numbers may spike again as declining \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNCBRTINUSA\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">U.S. birth rates\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> soon translate into \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/college-students-predicted-to-fall-by-more-than-15-after-the-year-2025/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">fewer graduating high schoolers after 2025\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First, the numbers. Thirty-five colleges and universities shut down in 2021, a 70 percent decrease from 2016, when a peak of 120 colleges shuttered, according to an analysis of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/PEPS/index.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">federal data\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). For-profit operators ran more than 80 percent of the 861 institutions that ceased operations between 2004 and 2021. For perspective, the number of closures over the past 18 years represents almost 15 percent of the 5,860 of the colleges and universities that remain in operation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-60359 aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/barshay-graph.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"385\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/barshay-graph.png 624w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/barshay-graph-160x99.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\">“Many have closed their doors in recent years and many more may do so in the years to come,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which collaborated with SHEEO to track what happens to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/SHEEO-NSCRCCollegeClosuresReport.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">students when their colleges shut down\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Higher education administrators point out that it’s equally important to monitor individual campus closures. The closure of a branch campus can also leave students without good, nearby options for completing their degrees even when the parent institution is still operating branches elsewhere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The number of these campus closures is 11 times larger. Almost 9,500 campuses closed between 2004 and 2021. Roughly 500 were closed because of a merger or a consolidation with another college. These campuses don’t always shut down physically but students aren’t necessarily able to continue their previous studies there. The remaining 8,986 branch campus closures occurred at 2,011 different institutions. Most of them continued to operate campuses at other locations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very few of any of these closures took place at public colleges or universities. One big exception was Purdue University. It shut down four campuses after it \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/transaction-complete-for-purdue-global.html#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20Purdue%20Global%2C%20Indiana's%20newest%20public,transaction%20with%20Kaplan%20Higher%20Education.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">purchased for-profit Kaplan University in 2018 \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and converted it to a public four-year university called Purdue Global. Most other public closures were small ones, such as the closure of a teacher training site at a local elementary school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Closures happen for many reasons but generally involve declining student enrollment, which leads to diminishing tuition dollars, a main source of revenue for many colleges. Weak finances have cut off for-profit institutions from the federal student loan program. That suddenly prevents students from obtaining subsidized loans to pay their private tuition bills. Many small liberal arts colleges have struggled to attract students altogether.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The consequences for students at these shuttered campuses are enormous. Fewer than half of them ever re-enrolled in college, according to a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sheeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SHEEO_NSCRC_CollegeClosures_Report1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">November 2022 report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by SHEEO and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The two organizations collaborated on a research project tracking 143,000 students at 467 campuses that closed between 2004 and 2020. As of February 2022, only about a third of the 47 percent of students who succeeded in transferring to another campus completed a degree or a credential. More than 60 percent of the students at a shuttered campus became college dropouts, adding to the large pool of U.S. adults who have student loans and no degree.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Their schools’ closing effectively closes doors on the students’ educational dreams,” said Shapiro. “It is a serious hardship for the students.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a campus closure, students often have to apply as a transfer student to a new institution. Shapiro explained that it’s difficult for students to find a college that will accept all the credits that they’ve already earned. It’s even more challenging to find a college with a similar degree program or major without having to start over again with new prerequisites. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Burns, senior policy analyst at SHEEO, is urging state regulators to make sure all colleges have contingency plans, known as “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nwccu.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Teach-Out-Plans-and-Teach-Out-Agreements-Policy.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">teach-out plans\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” in place so that students are automatically transferred with all of their accumulated credits to another institution. That will be even more important as SHEEO predicts sharp declines in student enrollment and tuition revenue in the years ahead. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-861-colleges-and-9499-campuses-have-closed-down-since-2004/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">colleges closing\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletter.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>College isn’t for everyone, many argue. But what is the alternative? An old idea is to train kids in a trade in high school. However, high school trade programs have had a deservedly bad reputation as a “dumping ground” for low-income students, providing a subpar education and failing to prepare young adults for the modern world. These classes are also bound up with a shameful racial history. When schools were forced to desegregate, many funneled Black students into vocational tracks to keep them apart from white students under the same roof.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High school vocational programs have changed a lot over the past 20 years by both increasing their academic rigor and expanding career fields, from construction and cosmetology to information technology and healthcare. Federal legislation has encouraged these programs to prepare students not only for a career, but also for college. Labels have changed too. It’s now called career and technical education and often abbreviated as CTE. Today, students are actively choosing, instead of being passively steered to shop classes, and white students are more likely to opt for a CTE high school program than Black students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Massachusetts has been at the forefront of this trend. \u003ca href=\"https://www.bluehills.org/academics/program-of-studies.pdf\">Four years of math\u003c/a> are typically required of vocational students along with the option to take challenging honors classes and calculus. The state spends about \u003ca href=\"https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai22-640\">$3,000 more per vocational student\u003c/a> a year, according to a September 2022 analysis. Vocational programs are more costly to run because they require expensive equipment and spacious classrooms. The hands-on instruction also means smaller classes. Schools usually need to hire more teachers to serve the same number of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent decades, student performance at Massachusetts high schools dedicated to career and technical education has surpassed traditional high schools, according to a May 2022 book, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Achievement-Massachusettss-National-Vocational-Technical/dp/0985208678\">Hands-On Achievement: Massachusetts’s National Model Vocational-Technical Schools\u003c/a>,” published by the free market research organization Pioneer Institute. Both test scores and graduation rates were higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to conclude from raw data if students are really better off with job training in high school and whether it’s worth the extra taxpayer expense to run these programs. In Massachusetts, many vocational schools are extremely popular and have long waiting lists. They’re akin to magnet schools that admit the strongest students with unblemished attendance records and high grades. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that strong students might continue to thrive at \u003ca href=\"https://www.valleytech.k12.ma.us/domain/21\">a high caliber vocational school\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a pair of academic researchers from Florida State University and Vanderbilt University have analyzed the Massachusetts experiment in career and technical education by following students seven years after graduating high school in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Thanks to detailed school records, the researchers were able to compare students of the same race or ethnicity, family income and most importantly, with the same eighth grade test scores, grades and attendance records. The only difference was that some had career training in high school while others took traditional high school courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biggest surprise was that college going rates were higher for students in five career categories: healthcare, education, information technology, arts/communications and business. For example, 77 percent of the students who specialized in healthcare enrolled in college within seven years of graduating high school. That’s 15 percentage points higher than similar students who had a traditional high school education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s nursing programs and allied health programs at community colleges that clearly follow after a student’s healthcare classes in high school,” said Walter Ecton, an assistant professor of education at Florida State University and lead author of the study, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/01623737221103842?journalCode=epaa\">Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes\u003c/a>, published in August 2022 in the peer-reviewed journal of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. “Students have a clear pathway and a clear track that they’re putting themselves on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_59881\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-59881\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration.png\" alt=\"Fields of concentration for high school vocational students in Massachusetts for graduating seniors 2009-2011\" width=\"977\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration-800x450.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration-160x90.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Massachusetts, one out of five high school students in career programs, graduating between 2009 and 2011, specialized in construction. Students needed to be enrolled in the career cluster for at least two academic years. Source: Appendix of Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. August 2022.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven years after high school graduation, these career students’ salaries were higher too. For example, healthcare students earned $5,491 more annually than their traditional high school counterparts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, college going rates were considerably worse for two career fields: construction and transportation, an area that includes auto repair. Students who specialized in construction fields in high school were five percentage points less likely to go to college than similar traditional high school students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the bright side, construction had the highest earnings premium after seven years. Students who studied construction earned $7,698 more annually seven years after high school graduation than similar students who had a traditional high school education. The earnings premium for transportation students diminished from over $6,000 (four years after graduation) to under $5,000 (seven years after graduation) as traditional high school students started to catch up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Students who go into construction, they are earning more, at least for the first seven years after high school graduation than we might otherwise expect, and quite a bit more,” Ecton said. “But they’re also much less likely to go to college than we might otherwise expect. I think that that’s a difficult tradeoff. Different students and families and counselors might make different choices here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ecton’s bigger point is that all career and technical education isn’t the same. “We wanted to understand if certain career pathways are paying off more,” he said. “It’s not a simple yes or no answer. It matters which field you’re going into.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_59880\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-59880\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school.png\" alt=\"Higher earnings for vocational high school students in Massachusetts by field\" width=\"977\" height=\"702\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school-800x575.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school-160x115.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school-768x552.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">CTE concentrators’ annual earnings advantage over traditional high school students with similar demographic and academic backgrounds. These figures compare high school students who graduated between 2009 and 2011. Source: Figure 5 of Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. August 2022.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Massachusetts, every career field showed at least some benefit over a traditional high school education – either in higher earnings, higher college going or both. But Ecton says that’s not a reason for everyone to pursue a vocational high school course of studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a student who already has very high academic achievement, who is already on a clear path to attending and graduating from a bachelor’s degree program, I think that there’s less clear evidence to suggest that CTE is necessarily going to help those students,” said Ecton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think CTE can be really useful for students who are less engaged in high school in a traditional classroom setting,” said Ecton. “If I were advising a student on whether to be a CTE concentrator or not, one question I would ask is, how else are you going to spend your time if not as a CTE student?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the alternative is study hall or a test prep class for struggling students, which Ecton says is often the case, CTE can be more engaging and help expose students to clear options after high school. Ecton highlighted how ninth graders at Massachusetts’ vocational high schools take courses in several career areas, from construction to healthcare to business, getting a taste of many fields before settling on a specialization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rosy student experience with career-and-technical education in Massachusetts might not be true elsewhere. The state has a highly educated population with workforce needs in high tech and healthcare. And Massachusetts has invested a lot of money in high-quality vocational programs for high school students. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai22-640\">cost-benefit analysis\u003c/a> published in September 2022 determined that the public gains between $56,500 to $113,900 in higher earnings and reduced welfare expenditures for each vocational high school student in Massachusetts. But in Connecticut, the benefits were much smaller — only about $10,000. New Jersey and Delaware run costlier vocational programs and more analysis is needed to see if they are paying off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, even in Massachusetts, the results are uneven. The Pioneer Institute found that one vocational high school in Boston didn’t produce such glowing benefits for students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sometimes in CTE we see a legacy program that’s been around for a very long time,” Florida State’s Ecton said. “But maybe it’s not setting students up for either college or a good paying job right after high school. But we keep those programs because they’ve been here forever. Maybe they’re even popular among students. I would really encourage schools to do this same analysis and make sure they’re seeing at least some positive outcomes in all of their different programs of study for students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-shop-class-sometimes-boosts-college-going-massachusetts-study-finds/\">\u003cem>CTE \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>College isn’t for everyone, many argue. But what is the alternative? An old idea is to train kids in a trade in high school. However, high school trade programs have had a deservedly bad reputation as a “dumping ground” for low-income students, providing a subpar education and failing to prepare young adults for the modern world. These classes are also bound up with a shameful racial history. When schools were forced to desegregate, many funneled Black students into vocational tracks to keep them apart from white students under the same roof.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High school vocational programs have changed a lot over the past 20 years by both increasing their academic rigor and expanding career fields, from construction and cosmetology to information technology and healthcare. Federal legislation has encouraged these programs to prepare students not only for a career, but also for college. Labels have changed too. It’s now called career and technical education and often abbreviated as CTE. Today, students are actively choosing, instead of being passively steered to shop classes, and white students are more likely to opt for a CTE high school program than Black students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Massachusetts has been at the forefront of this trend. \u003ca href=\"https://www.bluehills.org/academics/program-of-studies.pdf\">Four years of math\u003c/a> are typically required of vocational students along with the option to take challenging honors classes and calculus. The state spends about \u003ca href=\"https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai22-640\">$3,000 more per vocational student\u003c/a> a year, according to a September 2022 analysis. Vocational programs are more costly to run because they require expensive equipment and spacious classrooms. The hands-on instruction also means smaller classes. Schools usually need to hire more teachers to serve the same number of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent decades, student performance at Massachusetts high schools dedicated to career and technical education has surpassed traditional high schools, according to a May 2022 book, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Achievement-Massachusettss-National-Vocational-Technical/dp/0985208678\">Hands-On Achievement: Massachusetts’s National Model Vocational-Technical Schools\u003c/a>,” published by the free market research organization Pioneer Institute. Both test scores and graduation rates were higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to conclude from raw data if students are really better off with job training in high school and whether it’s worth the extra taxpayer expense to run these programs. In Massachusetts, many vocational schools are extremely popular and have long waiting lists. They’re akin to magnet schools that admit the strongest students with unblemished attendance records and high grades. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that strong students might continue to thrive at \u003ca href=\"https://www.valleytech.k12.ma.us/domain/21\">a high caliber vocational school\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a pair of academic researchers from Florida State University and Vanderbilt University have analyzed the Massachusetts experiment in career and technical education by following students seven years after graduating high school in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Thanks to detailed school records, the researchers were able to compare students of the same race or ethnicity, family income and most importantly, with the same eighth grade test scores, grades and attendance records. The only difference was that some had career training in high school while others took traditional high school courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biggest surprise was that college going rates were higher for students in five career categories: healthcare, education, information technology, arts/communications and business. For example, 77 percent of the students who specialized in healthcare enrolled in college within seven years of graduating high school. That’s 15 percentage points higher than similar students who had a traditional high school education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s nursing programs and allied health programs at community colleges that clearly follow after a student’s healthcare classes in high school,” said Walter Ecton, an assistant professor of education at Florida State University and lead author of the study, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/01623737221103842?journalCode=epaa\">Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes\u003c/a>, published in August 2022 in the peer-reviewed journal of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. “Students have a clear pathway and a clear track that they’re putting themselves on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_59881\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-59881\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration.png\" alt=\"Fields of concentration for high school vocational students in Massachusetts for graduating seniors 2009-2011\" width=\"977\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration-800x450.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration-160x90.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-vocational-students-concentration-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Massachusetts, one out of five high school students in career programs, graduating between 2009 and 2011, specialized in construction. Students needed to be enrolled in the career cluster for at least two academic years. Source: Appendix of Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. August 2022.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven years after high school graduation, these career students’ salaries were higher too. For example, healthcare students earned $5,491 more annually than their traditional high school counterparts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, college going rates were considerably worse for two career fields: construction and transportation, an area that includes auto repair. Students who specialized in construction fields in high school were five percentage points less likely to go to college than similar traditional high school students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the bright side, construction had the highest earnings premium after seven years. Students who studied construction earned $7,698 more annually seven years after high school graduation than similar students who had a traditional high school education. The earnings premium for transportation students diminished from over $6,000 (four years after graduation) to under $5,000 (seven years after graduation) as traditional high school students started to catch up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Students who go into construction, they are earning more, at least for the first seven years after high school graduation than we might otherwise expect, and quite a bit more,” Ecton said. “But they’re also much less likely to go to college than we might otherwise expect. I think that that’s a difficult tradeoff. Different students and families and counselors might make different choices here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ecton’s bigger point is that all career and technical education isn’t the same. “We wanted to understand if certain career pathways are paying off more,” he said. “It’s not a simple yes or no answer. It matters which field you’re going into.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_59880\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-59880\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school.png\" alt=\"Higher earnings for vocational high school students in Massachusetts by field\" width=\"977\" height=\"702\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school-800x575.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school-160x115.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/Hechinger-CTE-annual-earnings-over-traditional-high-school-768x552.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">CTE concentrators’ annual earnings advantage over traditional high school students with similar demographic and academic backgrounds. These figures compare high school students who graduated between 2009 and 2011. Source: Figure 5 of Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. August 2022.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Massachusetts, every career field showed at least some benefit over a traditional high school education – either in higher earnings, higher college going or both. But Ecton says that’s not a reason for everyone to pursue a vocational high school course of studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a student who already has very high academic achievement, who is already on a clear path to attending and graduating from a bachelor’s degree program, I think that there’s less clear evidence to suggest that CTE is necessarily going to help those students,” said Ecton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think CTE can be really useful for students who are less engaged in high school in a traditional classroom setting,” said Ecton. “If I were advising a student on whether to be a CTE concentrator or not, one question I would ask is, how else are you going to spend your time if not as a CTE student?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the alternative is study hall or a test prep class for struggling students, which Ecton says is often the case, CTE can be more engaging and help expose students to clear options after high school. Ecton highlighted how ninth graders at Massachusetts’ vocational high schools take courses in several career areas, from construction to healthcare to business, getting a taste of many fields before settling on a specialization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rosy student experience with career-and-technical education in Massachusetts might not be true elsewhere. The state has a highly educated population with workforce needs in high tech and healthcare. And Massachusetts has invested a lot of money in high-quality vocational programs for high school students. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai22-640\">cost-benefit analysis\u003c/a> published in September 2022 determined that the public gains between $56,500 to $113,900 in higher earnings and reduced welfare expenditures for each vocational high school student in Massachusetts. But in Connecticut, the benefits were much smaller — only about $10,000. New Jersey and Delaware run costlier vocational programs and more analysis is needed to see if they are paying off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, even in Massachusetts, the results are uneven. The Pioneer Institute found that one vocational high school in Boston didn’t produce such glowing benefits for students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sometimes in CTE we see a legacy program that’s been around for a very long time,” Florida State’s Ecton said. “But maybe it’s not setting students up for either college or a good paying job right after high school. But we keep those programs because they’ve been here forever. Maybe they’re even popular among students. I would really encourage schools to do this same analysis and make sure they’re seeing at least some positive outcomes in all of their different programs of study for students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"soldout": {
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"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
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