Jacqueline Rivera, who lives in East Boston, considered going to a four-year college right after high school, but she had two major obstacles.
“It was a little bit far away, so I couldn’t really realistically get there,” she said. “And it was way out of my budget.”
She enrolled in a nearby community college to become a physician assistant but dropped out after she realized healthcare wasn’t the right fit. Then last year, unemployed and unsure of her next step, Rivera remembered how much she loved tinkering on her dad’s old Ford Explorer.
She enrolled in an automotive technician program at Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology in Boston, earning a two-year apprenticeship degree while working in a local dealership.
It’s just one of the apprenticeship degrees the school offers. Other colleges nationwide are also jumping on the earn-to-learn trend to attract more students, combining classroom instruction with structured, paid work experience.
“I’m still learning the theory and everything while I am in school,” Rivera said. “But I’m also able to learn from the people that have already been in the field for years.”
As birth rates decline and skepticism about the value of a college degree grows, both community colleges and four-year universities are turning to apprenticeships as a way to stay relevant and solvent.
Vinz Koller, a vice president at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future, said students and families are increasingly drawn to the idea of earning a paycheck while learning practical skills.
“Do you want to spend $50,000 on your education — perhaps a year if you’re in a private school — or do you want to make $20,000 to $50,000 a year while you’re learning?” he asked. “That’s a pretty easy answer, I think, for most people.”
Meredith Nierman
GBH News
Franklin Cummings Tech is one of several schools reshaping its curriculum around this model of apprenticeship degrees. Others include community colleges in New Hampshire and Alabama, and Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Washington.
Aisha Francis, president of Franklin Cummings Tech, said embedding apprenticeships into degree programs makes college more meaningful — and marketable. In four years, the student body has increased from just 550 to about 1,000.
“Our goal is to be at 1,500,” Francis said. “And we hope that the vast majority of those 1,500 students are taking advantage of apprenticeship and work-based learning opportunities.”
Kirk Carapezza
GBH News
Rivera now works 32 hours a week at a Subaru dealership, takes 10 hours of classes, and is on track to graduate debt-free.
“It’s not just about the skills,” she said. “It’s how to carry yourself.”
And, she hopes, it will lead to a good-paying job so she can finally buy her own car.
There’s demand for work-based learning, but limited supply.
While there’s growing momentum around apprenticeship degrees, these programs are still rare.
Experts say it’s hard for students to find quality work-based learning, and for employers to build programs that count toward college credit.
Shalin Jyotishi, who researches the future of work at the think tank New America, said one factor is that colleges’ funding models don’t support or incentivize work-based learning.
“The funding formulas for higher education prioritize credit-bearing programs that lead to degree completion,” Jyotishi said. “Degree completion is the metric that many institutions of higher education stack themselves up against.”
Currently, apprenticeships account for just a fraction of U.S. learning programs: 680,000 registered apprentices compared to 19 million college students.
And many of those college students aren’t getting on-the-job experience while in school. Nationwide, more than 8 million college students said they wanted internships in 2023, but fewer than 4 million actually landed one, according to a study from by the Business-Higher Education Forum.
Meanwhile, employers’ demand for skilled labor is surging.
At a time when few issues unite U.S. politicians, apprenticeships enjoy bipartisan support. On the campaign trail last year, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris pledged to double their number.
“Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths — additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs,” she said at a rally last summer in Pennsylvania.
And President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order for more apprenticeships even as his administration shortchanges departments and makes budget proposals that undermine funding for them.
Last week, he posted a social media message suggesting billions of research dollars his administration had stripped from Harvard ought to go to trade schools instead.
Nonprofits are also getting involved
Some states — including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Indiana, Colorado, Maine, Washington and Maryland — are investing in apprenticeships that can get workers into jobs faster and more cheaply than college can.
In Maine, which has a lot of retirees and not enough workers, the state is trying to make its apprenticeships both accessible and appealing. Students can earn nationally recognized certificates and credentials from the Maine Department of Labor in fields ranging from healthcare and banking to aquaculture, the breeding and harvesting of fish.
The nonprofit Educate Maine works with schools and businesses on apprenticeship programs, including an aquaculture partnership with Southern Maine Community College and six local farms.
“We have high school students. We have students who are starting college, finishing up their college experience. We have participants who’ve been out of college for many many years,” said Hannah Greene, who manages workforce partnerships for Educate Maine. “So it’s really a broad range of folks that are interested in marine science but want that hands-on real-world experience in an industry that’s really growing.”
Maine’s strategy also includes a range of apprenticeships that are not aligned with colleges. There’s an automotive technician apprenticeship built around work at a local dealership and training from General Motors’ online program. Then there’s a cosmetologist apprenticeship based on work and classroom training at a salon. And there’s a computer technician apprenticeship that, appropriately, incorporates learning from online training platforms.
Maine recently hit a record number of apprentices, just over 3,600 according to Educate Maine and the Maine Department of Labor.
Greene admits that’s still small, even in a state with a fairly small population, but at least it’s growing.
“The more experiential learning programs that we can provide for Mainers, especially younger Mainers, the more we’re building the foundation of Maine’s future economy,” she said.
This story is part of GBH’s podcast College Uncovered. The latest episode “Apprentices of the World, Unite!” is out now.