If you’re a frequent reader of our blog, you already know we love to give shoutouts to organizations like Apprenticeships for America, who are helping shout the benefits of apprenticeships from the rooftops: more apprenticeships help more of our nation’s earn debt-free post-secondary education and well-paid jobs in their communities.
So let’s dive into their recent press release, which was picked up by Yahoo! Finance, who often distributes registered apprenticeship news.
And then Bruno Manno covered this data as well for Forbes in: The Saving Graces of Today’s Community Colleges.
Who Is Apprenticeships for America?
Apprenticeships for America is non-profit that counts over 2000 employers, services providers, colleges and others as members.
Stop by their site and the message is clear: “Transforming Futures Through Opportunity…At Apprenticeships for America, we’re on a mission to revolutionize how America prepares its workforce for a brighter future. Apprenticeships are not just a model; they’re a proven, cost-effective pathway to success, and it’s time the United States fully embraced their potential.”
Where Can You Get the Report?
“How Community Colleges Can Help Scale US Aprpenticeships: Evidence from the Field” is available on their website. Grab a full copy here: https://www.apprenticeshipsforamerica.org/cc-report-release
What’s Positive? What’s Negative?
We love to see community colleges get involved. They can act as RTI providers and they can be apprenticeship sponsors.
We also liked to see that the article accurately described the thinking of Gen Z, also known as the toolbelt generation and as part of the deskless worker movement. They don’t want to be saddled with student debt. They want to earn while they learn.
So it was great to hear that so many colleges have registered over the period the report studied: 2016 to 2023. 30 colleges were registered as sponsors back in 2016 and now there are over 200. Sounds great?
Hold on…the study also found something quite concerning. Less than 50% of those programs actually had apprentices.
It also concluded that finding funding is challenging.
The “administrative burden of managing programs” and “the challenge of recruiting sufficient employer partners” are barriers to program success.
How GoSprout Can Help
And we couldn’t agree more. That’s why we created GoSprout. Founder Carlos Vazquez realized that apprenticeships are amazing when we saw how they put structure around a path that he traveled just via a series of extremely lucky connections.
And we’ve heard from companies both small and large that administration without the right tools is an Excel and email-based nightmare.
Yes, recruiting employers is hard if you’re introducing apprenticeships in a way that appears to be unprofitable and might actually lower team morale with all the added complexity.
But that’s without GoSprout. We created our cloud apprenticeship management software to help community colleges streamline their internal operations, but we also facilitate them becoming what we call a super sponsor.
A super sponsor can basically orchestrate multiple programs from a single platform and remove the administrative burden for them. So community colleges can adopt GoSprout, wow the local employment community with what they can do so solve staffing problems, run the whole ecosystem, and raise their post-graduation hire rates…all by offering registered apprenticeships the right way.
What’s Next?
If you’re getting value, we’d encourage you to help Apprenticeships for America spread the good word. Go repost one of their LinkedIn posts, often by John Colburn.
There’s a lot more to this study. Check back shortly for a deeper dive into some of the key takeaways with commentary from GoSprout’s own Carlos Vazquez.
