APPRENTICESHIP

Report: The role community colleges can play in growing U.S. apprenticeships

Findings indicate apprenticeship opportunities are significantly underutilized
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Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in community college-sponsored apprenticeship programs, according to Apprenticeships for America (AFA). “The number of community college sponsors with active apprentices has seen a steady increase since 2016. Starting from just 30 sponsors with active apprentices, the number climbed to over 200 by 2023.” This from AFA’s new report – How Community Colleges Can Help Scale U.S. Apprenticeships: Evidence from the Field.

Despite this tremendous growth, the report finds, “Despite the increase in active sponsors over the last decade, the average number of apprentices per sponsor has decreased over time.

“As of 2023, 541 community or technical colleges were identified as registered apprenticeship sponsors. However, only 208 of these colleges have an active apprentice. The overall number of apprentices in these programs (about 15,500) represent only a small fraction (about 3%) of all civilian apprentices.”

The report aims to identify how community colleges can have a significant impact on workforce development by effectively taking a leading role in apprenticeship expansion.

Among the strategies to become an apprenticeship intermediary:

  • Community colleges will have higher impact and more relevance when they can begin to customize classroom instruction to the needs of an apprenticeship program.
  • Community colleges can extend the sponsorship role to include multi-employer sponsorships in multiple industries and occupations.
  • For community colleges with a highly developed student success ethos, they may find themselves with opportunities in advancing apprentice retention and success.
  • Traditional community college tuition and financing methods can be made to better support apprenticeship. Be it FTE funding, Pell, and GI Bill tuition assistance, modest adjustments can better connect these funding sources, improve outcomes for students, and – in many cases – reduce costs to the taxpayer.

The report states, “Apprenticeship… offers a way for community colleges to address the skepticism of students that has driven enrollment declines in recent years. It is demonstrably connected to an employment outcome.

“It doesn’t entail incurring student debt. And it offers an alternative pedagogy for students who are looking for an alternative to traditional classroom-only instruction.”

The nonprofit AFA is a coalition of more than 2,000 employers, service providers, colleges, labor organizations, and researchers working to expand apprenticeship access.

Get How Community Colleges Can Help Scale U.S. Apprenticeships: Evidence from the Field details here.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.