Articles

‘Why 5 Million Apprenticeships Will Make America Great Again’ – Forbes, Online

by Nicholas Wyman.

The White House roundtable last week has shone a spotlight on the countries job, skills and training needs for the 21st century workplace. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel and leading American and German industrial CEOs seated at the Cabinet table, President Donald Trump praised Germany’s long-term approach in using on apprenticeships programs to develop its workforce’ skills, declaring “The German apprenticeship model is one of the proven programs to developing a highly skilled workforce. Germany has been amazing at this.”

The U.S., he stated, must embrace innovation in technical and vocational education and explore effective non-college approaches, like apprenticeships to prepare people for the trade, manufacturing and other well-paying careers of the future.

And its easy to understand why: Germany, despite having the highest wage costs in the world, has a significantly lower unemployment (4.2%) and youth unemployment (6.5%) rate than the U.S. (4.9% and 9.9%) or any other comparable country. It also has a an export economy focused high-value manufacturing: last last year Germany lodged a record trade current account deficit of U.S. $297 billion – nearly 8.5% of GDP – and runs strong budget surpluses.

As these enviable economic outcomes are substantively underpinned by Germany’s commitment to wide and varied apprenticeship training pathways, it was no surprise to hear CEO after CEO outline how their firm’s approaches to expanding vocational pathways and call for the expansion of apprenticeship programs in the U.S.

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, even encouraged the president to “take a moonshot goal to create five million apprenticeships in the next five years.”

The president’s response “let’s do that, let’s go for that five million” was mightily encouraging to apprenticeship advocates across the nation.

Image: In Germany, vocational training is ingrained in the education culture. Apprentices learn the basics of precision filing at the Siemens training center, Berlin. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A target of five million apprenticeships, may seem a significant stretch as the U.S. currently has just on 500,000 active apprentice positions, however, a unified approach to expanding this mode of training would not also generate improved economic and employment conditions for our citizens, but also put a big dent into several related social and budgetary problems, for example:

• Closing the “skills gap” that is acting as a handbrake on business investment in capacity expansion in the U.S. A shortage of skilled job candidates regularly tops of list of CEO complaints.

• High youth joblessness and underemployment. Millions are unemployed or stuck in low-wage, temporary jobs, with little hope of moving up. Apprenticeships will help people avoid a range of poverty and welfare traps.

• Stagnant wages. Wages stagnate when productivity fails to grow. Apprenticeships turn out workers trained to the cutting edge of industry, to ensure maximum productivity. (Most newly minted apprentices pull down starting pay from $45,000 to $60,000, out-earning the majority of their bachelor degree peers).

Yet despite knowledge of the benefits and superior outcomes generated by German and other European vocational training systems, only a small percentage of U.S. high school graduates enter apprenticeships, compared to their counterparts in some high-income EU countries.

Why is that? Blame could be reasonably apportioned onto many heads: high schools that have eliminated vocation education; some counselors and parents who think that the only pathway to a successful and rewarding career runs through a four-year college degree; and a job snobbery, where many in society look down their nose at careers that involve making or fixing things. On the front line, its more a chicken-egg problem. There are far too few apprenticeship offers from companies for many schools and counselors to pay much attention.

The unacknowledged reality is that too many young Americans are being pushed towards college will not graduate. According to the Department of Labor, 69.2% of the three million 2015 high school graduates subsequently enrolled in colleges or universities.

Yet the six year graduation rate is only six in 10. So, what becomes of those 40% who will drop out? Chances are they will be saddled with student debt, no qualification, an incomplete skill set and will have lost some formative years of training. As this is the scenario facing roughly 850,000 young Americans each year, we need to do better.

So, in the wake of the big White House skills roundtable, what can business leaders and the Trump administration do to rapidly scale up apprenticeships? Here are three easy to achieve suggestions:

1. Redirect tax dollars from ineffective government job-training programs and weak academic programs to incentives that encourage private companies to offer more apprenticeships.

2. Establish a major marketing effort to promote apprenticeships and to make apprenticeships more straightforward to create.

3. Insist that major contractors on federally funded infrastructure projects incorporate apprentices in their work crews.

Encouragingly, there are many great and inspiring examples of apprenticeship programs (and apprentices!) which gives me hope that we can close our skills gaps.

To deliver on his promises to create 25 million new jobs in ten years, recreate industrial America and bring back U.S. manufacturing, it is clear the president should grasp Marc Benioff’s “moonshoot” suggestion, set an ambitious target of five million apprentices in five years.

The result be would be a significant down payment on the president’s 25 million jobs target, the expansion of the most cost-effective skills training model across America and as well as positively impacting the lives of potential millions of people along the way.

That’s the thing about shooting for the moon – even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars!

Link:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2017/03/21/why-5-million-apprenticeships-will-make-america-great-again/#6a8223c22fce

‘Don’t go to college for career advice’ – Salon.com, Online

Massive college debt is a hot-button issue these days. I sat down with Nick Wyman, the CEO of the Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation and author of “Job U,” to discuss how to better prepare Americans for their future careers.

“Really what happened is we suddenly had this massive amount of people going to college, a lot of people were dropping out of college, people are taking on student loans,” Wyman said during our Salon Talks.

According to the U.S. Census, more than 20 percent of people 18 to 34 years old live in poverty in America today. This is an uptick from how Baby Boomers lived in the 1980s, with millennials earning an average of $2,000 less today than young adults did back then, even though they are more likely to have a college degree.

Wyman argued that this cycle is bad for our workforce and bad for our country — he’s worried that we’re inadequately preparing our young people for the workforce.

“So you have people exiting the education system without the skills that employers need, and that caused all sorts of problems,” Wyman said.

Source:
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/03/watch-dont-go-to-college-for-career-advice-cautions-workplace-skills-expert/

‘The Lowdown on CTE Down Under’ – Techniques Magazine, USA

For more than a century, vocational education and training (VET), as career and technical education (CTE) is known as in Australia, has been a core tenet of workforce development for the country’s traditionally and heavily industry-centered economy.
Respected internationally as a leading exponent of integrated and responsive training, Australia’s VET sector has proven its ability to be adaptive and agile in supporting government priorities to establish young people in the workforce, while working with industry to develop future-focused skills training packages. Despite its comparative maturity, the Australian VET sector is tackling many of the same pressures and issues as the United States, including skill shortages, hesitant employers, digital disruption pains and current training curriculum, all while trying to improve accountability. To understand how Australia has developed and is adapting. We asked a few of the country’s thought leaders to identify the current key concerns “at the coalface.”

Techniques Magazine, USA

‘To Put Americans Back To Work, The Trump Administration Must Embrace Apprenticeships’ – Forbes, US

Caption: Recently approved apprenticeship frameworks in cybersecurity map career pathways on completion toward roles as a security analyst, network security engineer or becoming an information systems security manager.

By Nicholas Wyman, 8 February 2017

With an estimated 200 million people globally out of work and 40% of the world’s people either underemployed or in vulnerable forms of employment unemployment remains a critical policy challenge Governments globally need to solve.

However, in reading publications like FORBES one hears corporates spanning the globe frustrated that they have job openings, yet they lack the skilled people required to fill them.

Why do companies struggle to find the right talent, despite the fact that we have never been better educated as a society? It all points to a major mismatch between the skills our students are being taught and their relevance to the employment market. Something fundamentally does not, and is not working in the way we educate and train our young people to get them into the workforce.

Getting America back to work and repairing the “rust belt” are key themes of President Donald Trump’s administration, which promises 25 million new jobs, signalling this issue as one of its top priorities.

While education and training models and methods have traditionally been determined by the public sector, we are beginning to catch on that the most successful education and training systems are those which seek to align classroom lessons with the needs of industry and local employers.

Parents have always sought to guide their children’s career paths, but as the pace of change and the nature of work perennially evolves and quickens, the question of whether or not a child’s chosen subjects of study will translate to a job can be answered with hope but not certainty. In today’s world of automation and global supply chains, education and employment no longer take on linear paths – jobs can quickly change and so do their requirements.

The methodical and considered processes of bureaucracies are critiqued as too slow to adapt to the pace of change. However, if there is to be reform to the education and training system, the public sector will need support, and this support should come from the main beneficiary of the education and training sector – employers.

Collaboration between the public and the private sector stakeholder is essential to developing a system that works for students and employers and that allows education and training opportunities to be as diverse and flexible as talent and jobs demand. The world is filled with a variety of jobs requiring all kinds of people and skill sets. But the nodes and pathways currently available in education and training sector fails to properly reflect this diversity.

What can this administration do to deliver on the promise of new jobs, without expanding government or federal spending? One solution lies in an age-old practice with origins in medieval times but which has managed to endure through innovating and adapting across numerous sectors, countries, and cultures – the humble apprenticeship. Regular workforce studies shows us that the apprenticeship model works – countries with strong apprenticeship systems (Switzerland, Germany, Austria) have robust economies due to a skilled workforce, and less than half the rate of youth unemployment found in the U.S. Take Switzerland for example, only 30% of youth take the academic path, while the vast majority, 70% follows the apprenticeship route. (Not coincidentally, these economies also have comparatively lower government debt, and higher labour productivity).
Apprenticeships and work readiness programs are great examples of how the public and the private sector can collaborate to plan and build a talent pipeline for jobs in sectors as diverse as IT, health, hospitality, advanced manufacturing, defense, finance, engineering, etc.

Employers which enact apprenticeship strategies not only set up their workforce for the long-term, but also get immediate short-term payoffs. A study in Switzerland showed companies recover their investment in a three year apprenticeship after the first year. In the U.S., it’s been found that with every dollar spent on apprenticeship program, yields a return of $1.47 back in increased productivity and innovation. In a country where young people are increasingly burdened by student debt, the average starting wage for an American apprentice is $65,000 per year.

The good news is that necessary change is already underway: companies, policy makers and educators have awakened to the power of apprenticeship and employer-driven work readiness programs to redress America’s current skills deficit and high youth unemployment. And history shows us great gains can be made quickly. The U.K. for example, re-prioritized apprenticeship and trainee-ship, setting a target of adding two million apprentice positions in the five years, a target it met and exceeded. It it plans to reach 3 million starts by 2020.

In the U.S., the comeback and makeover of apprenticeships has already emerged in several states. South Carolina for example, has become a model example of how apprenticeships can cover a broad field of occupations: the number of its companies offering apprenticeships has increased from 90 – 840 in the last decade, an 800% increase.

Partnerships with employers, educators, local community colleges, trusted industry intermediaries, economic development units and the Department of Labor are designing and implementing apprenticeship programs, using innovative methods and approaches to leverage public and private sector engagement.

In addition, companies from various sectors have made commitments to increase apprenticeship and work readiness programs in the U.S. and have called on other companies to follow suit. A great example of this are the numerous companies who supported National Apprenticeship Week by promoting such programs through career fairs and workshops.

The progress necessary to provide meaningful employment and spark system change must come from our leaders coming together and working together, whilst remembering that no one has a monopoly on good ideas, and no one can singularly predict the future. The more that they interact and engage the more innovation and market alignment we will see, and the more willing and confident industry will be in expanding their workforces to hire apprentices.

Whilst Congress seems likely be a divided on many issues, there has been bipartisan support for apprenticeship training initiatives in recent years. Building on this existing momentum to focus on reforming and expanding America’s apprenticeship system offers the new administration a golden opportunity to put a down payment on those promised 25 million jobs and truly put America back to work.

This piece was coauthored with Shea Gopaul, Executive Officer at the Global Apprenticeship Network (GAN).

Source:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2017/02/08/to-put-americans-back-to-work-the-trump-administration-must-embrace-apprenticeships/#697459a0780d

‘Fixing the Nation’s Cybersecurity Talent Shortage’ – Homeland Today, US

By: Nicholas Wyman and Chase Norlin 02/06/2017.

Source: http://www.hstoday.us/briefings/daily-news-analysis/single-article/special-fixing-the-nations-cybersecurity-talent-shortage/73f215a5adcd19ae7d609f5d6d693c4c.html

Almost weekly, we hear of encroachments into big data systems in government, the military, finance, health, hospitality and retail – to name just some of the affected industry sectors. As awareness of our vulnerability has increased, demand for cybersecurity specialists has risen dramatically.

Cybersecurity is not a low-skill field. It requires general IT knowledge, specialist cybersecurity certifications, and, sometimes, knowledge about particular industry sectors such as finance and health. We need talented, skilled professionals to meet the demand. And we don’t need them in a few years – we need them now. How do we get enough people in the pipeline to meet the growing need?

One way is through apprenticeship. When you hear the word “apprenticeship,” you may conjure up an image of 17th century craftsmen huddled over wooden workbenches wielding chisels. But, in fact, today’s apprenticeship programs are becoming more sophisticated and progressive, and can be found in many modern fields including cybersecurity.

Dollar for dollar, no workforce training method packs as much punch as apprenticeship. Apprenticeships are key to addressing problems such as youth unemployment, widening income disparities and a shrinking middle class. Nine out of ten apprentices are employed immediately upon finishing their training, at an average starting salary of around $50,000 a year. In the cybersecurity field, the average starting salary is at least $70,000.

Apprenticeship in cybersecurity combines hands-on training with college coursework, and is paired with scalable wage increases. This earn-while-you-learn model leads directly to mastery without the burden of high tuition fees and student loan debt.

And, because the cybersecurity field relies so heavily on certification, apprenticeship is a natural fit. That’s not to say that people trained in cybersecurity need to stop at the certification level. Just the opposite, actually. Certification in the field is more valuable to employers than other IT fields and opens up a host of potential career pathways.

What apprenticeship does very effectively is get people qualified for specific, employer-defined jobs and trained in real-world settings more quickly than a traditional 4-year college path.

High-quality cybersecurity apprenticeship programs may have other benefits as well, such as fostering greater diversity and inclusivity in the IT workforce. Women and minorities are vastly under-represented in the IT field, and many leading IT firms want to change this.

Apprenticeships can target this untapped talent pool because it gives these under-represented groups an affordable, practical and flexible pathway to well-paid employment.

Apprenticeship can also target another potential skill source – incumbent workers who have general IT skills but not the specific set of skills needed for cybersecurity work. An in-house apprenticeship program can give current employees the extra training and qualifications they need to meet the growing cybersecurity demand, while lessening or eliminating the burden of recruitment.

There is already movement at the state and national level to fast-track cybersecurity apprenticeships. The state of California is working to create fully approved apprenticeship programs as well as intensive cybersecurity bootcamps. At the national level, the Department of Labor (DOL) has approved a new apprenticeship framework in cybersecurity that encompasses eight primary job functions and a wide array of job-related competencies and technical skills.

The federal framework also includes a number of career pathways people can pursue after they complete the apprenticeship, including security analyst, network security engineer, information systems security manager and information assurance security officer. Employers who adopt this framework can fast-track DOL approval for their cybersecurity apprenticeship program.

In short, apprenticeship is an excellent way to close the large and growing gap between demand and supply in this critical field, with spillover benefits that include increasing diversity in the IT field, expanding the skill set of existing workers, and minimizing student debt. It’s time to seek out and fast-track your local apprenticeship program to a more cyber-secure future.

Nicholas Wyman is CEO of the Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation and author of, JOB U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need. He writes about job skills and training in the 21st-century workplace.

Chase Norlin is the CEO of Transmosis, an organization founded by Silicon Valley Technology Entrepreneurs dedicated to the research and application of technology to strengthen the American workforce.