As businesses got back to the basics as the recession bottomed out, it appears they kept room in their budgets for one of the oldest training concepts in the books ”“ apprenticeship.
In a first-ever survey of apprenticeship program sponsors, the Urban Institute found apprenticeship enjoys near universal support from businesses offering such programs. Researchers also found that companies often recruit new apprentices from their own networking activities, rather than relying on One-Stop Career Centers or other work-force development agencies.
As of June, nearly 800 Fairfield County companies were registered in the state apprentice program, according to the Connecticut Department of Labor, among some 2,500 businesses statewide that employ a total of 6,500 apprentices.
Construction companies dominate apprenticeship programs nationally, according to a 135-page study published in March by the Urban Institute.
Locally, nearly half of those companies were seeking electricians. Plumbing and HVAC companies also are amply represented, and machinists to a lesser degree.
Apprenticeship programs train workers on the job under the tutelage of experienced workers, who are expected to teach their charges craftsmanship and the ethic of the profession, and give them a chance to develop their self-esteem through achievements. The U.S. established a formal registration system under the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937.
The U.S. Department of Labor is in the midst of the biggest overhaul of apprentice regulations in more than 30 years. Apprentices will still be able to fulfill their program requirements by the traditional yardstick of serving a set amount of time on the job. But DOL will now allow them to “graduate” by proving they have mastered the skills they need to learn, or a hybrid measure incorporating both time and mastery.
DOL also proposed creating interim credentials to encourage apprentices as they progress in their programs, and vowed to better use technology for distance learning and reporting.
Nationally, about 465,000 companies sponsor apprentices on their work sites, according to a 135-page study published in March by the Urban Institute, and the Washington, D.C.-based think tank determined that five in six employers registered in such programs had apprentices in house at the time of the survey.
A similar ratio of employers strongly endorsed apprenticeship as an effective training program,with small fractions of employers stating they had run into problems with the time required to train an apprentice, or the effort and paperwork needed to run an effective program.
A quarter of companies surveyed said they had suffered from competitors who had poached apprentices, but the vast majority of those companies still recommended apprenticeship as a training strategy. Nearly as many businesses said they had experienced significant problems with apprentices leaving the job before their program was completed.
Still, such programs appear to be an effective way to shift the burden of training workers to a willing private sector.
In 2004, researchers determined that the number of registered apprentices nationally was almost on par with people receiving training through the Workforce Investment Act”™s Adult and Dislocated Worker programs, the Job Corps and the Trade Adjustment Act.
Whereas those latter programs cost billions of dollars to administer, the federal apprenticeship program costs a comparatively paltry $21 million due to employers and community colleges picking up the tab.
In its own survey, the Urban Institute determined that only about one in six employers relied on work-force investment boards and other publicly funded agencies to help them find apprentices.
In the next breath, however, survey respondents cited the need for help training apprentices in job basics before they moved onto advanced skills training at job sites.
The Connecticut Department of Labor has scheduled training programs for apprentices in various fields beginning Sept. 14 at Bullard Havens Technical High School in Bridgeport, Henry Abbott Technical High School in Danbury and J.M. Wright Technical High School in Stamford.
