For the past year, Indiana has been working on an ambitious new apprenticeship system for high schoolers, modeled on the Swiss one.
Almost all of the pieces to make it successful are in place: support from the governor, a revamped high school diploma that emphasizes work-based learning, more than $25M in funding from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, and multiple trips to Switzerland to show business leaders and educators how it can be done. But the last piece remains an open question: Will enough employers show up?
The Big Idea: Across the United States, getting employers on board has been one of the thorniest challenges in expanding youth apprenticeships. And the new Indiana Career Apprenticeship Pathway (INCAP) will need a lot of employers on board, with a goal of serving 50K apprentices by 2034.
So CEMETS iLab Indiana, which established the apprenticeship program, has spent a lot of the past year getting employers involved. The group created employer-led Industry Talent Associations, which bring together employers to identify high-needs occupations that would work well for apprenticeships. Employers in the talent associations also take the lead in creating detailed training plans not just for the workplace, but also for the high school classroom. In turn, the participating employers agree to hire apprentices. Regional intermediaries, called INCAP Connectors, will connect the talent associations with schools.
“The No. 1 challenge that everybody faces is employer engagement,” says Claire Fiddian-Green, president and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. “That’s why we’ve been digging in on that, because that’s what Switzerland has figured out. We’re trying to figure out how we can do something similar here.”
The iLab has developed seven talent associations across different industries, including one for adults. Four of the associations will welcome youth apprentices in the fall: advanced manufacturing and logistics, banking and financial services, healthcare, and IT. About 75 apprentices are slated to start in the upcoming year, and those numbers may grow as interviews continue.
The Swiss Model, Hoosier-Made
The new apprenticeship system in the state aims to disrupt the usual high school-to-college pipeline and get students to work earlier. Like the Swiss, Indiana’s leaders hope to weave together education and apprenticeship, allowing students to move seamlessly between the two as they advance beyond high school. In that country’s system, which has long been considered the gold standard for apprenticeships, about 70% of students start their careers as apprentices.
However, there are myriad challenges to adopting the model wholesale in the U.S., with transportation to and from worksites in a country without robust public transit being a commonly cited one. But perhaps a bigger structural barrier is how the labor and education systems operate in the U.S., essentially as separate silos whose goals are sometimes at odds.
Taylor White, director of postsecondary pathways for youth at New America, commends the iLab for challenging the status quo.
“A lot of approaches states have taken have been effective, but they have not activated employers at scale to participate in work-based learning and really be partners in the system,” White says. “There is a reluctance to let employers lead education. Educators educate, and that’s their role. Having businesses shape what’s taught and how it’s taught is just not something we really do here, and that’s what most people who are watching what’s happening in Indiana are curious to see.”
Employers at the Head of the Table
The process to create the Industry Talent Associations began with an analysis of which sectors were experiencing high demand for talent that employers weren’t able to fill through traditional educational pathways. Once those sectors were identified, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation funded trips to Switzerland for employers to see apprentices in action and learn how the system works. Fiddian-Green says they led delegations from all kinds of industries, from manufacturing and life sciences to entertainment and sports.
“After each of those trips, we would convene the employers and say, ‘You’ve seen this at scale in Switzerland. Do you think this makes sense in Indiana?’” Fiddian-Green says. “The answer has always been ‘yes.’ Then we ask them, ‘Who is the right entity to organize the Industry Talent Association?’ We have to make sure it’s someone that the employers select because they need to feel comfortable with that entity.”
On the Ground: Around half of the apprentices expected to be hired in the fall will work in healthcare under the occupation of “healthcare assistant.” Cassondra Squillace, senior director of workforce development in health at BioCrossroads and the leader of the Healthcare Industry Talent Association, says the role’s title is intentionally vague. The talent association wants the pathway to be responsive to the needs of the healthcare industry as a whole, rather than narrowly focused on specific roles.
Students will start in the program in 10th grade and will rotate through different departments in both patient care and outside of it, such as human resources and revenue cycle management. The talent association looked at HR and labor market data as they designed the rotations.
“But we also had honest and real conversations about what employers are experiencing in their organizations related to workforce deficits,” Squillace says. “Not only what roles they can’t fill but also, when they hire people into those roles, what are the skills deficits they’re seeing?”
Students will begin learning about different topics in healthcare for half-days, five days a week, in 10th grade. The following summer, they’ll start more on-site, hands-on training. By their senior year, they will be spending three full days a week in a healthcare facility or at training centers designed for employers across the industry. When they graduate, they’ll have completed more than 2,500 hours of healthcare-specific education and training, earning college credit through dual enrollment as well. The training covers more than 40 industry-identified competencies, and students will have the opportunity to earn industry-recognized credentials along the way so they could start working full-time after graduation.
Recent changes to Indiana education policy allow students to spend more hours at work-based learning sites for credit, including full days—which promises a greater return on investment for employers. All the apprenticeship programs are two or three years, so students will have the time to make a meaningful contribution.
On the education side, the Healthcare Industry Talent Association is discussing what kinds of classes students should take. In addition to biology and chemistry, the group might recommend anatomy and physiology and medical terminology. It also is working with the state’s education department to think beyond discrete academic fields and create industry-focused courses that would cover and award credit for multiple disciplines within a single class.
“The big-picture vision we will continue to work on with the Indiana Department of Education is how do we look at curriculum more holistically?” Squillace says. “Right now, not just in Indiana, high school education is pretty siloed. You take an English class, you take an algebra class, you take a science class, and they’re all their own thing.”
Early Lessons: While the INCAP apprenticeships haven’t yet begun, Baptist Health Floyd in New Albany and several other employers participated in a pilot program over the last few years. President Mike Schroyer went on one of the Switzerland trips and was immediately sold on the idea. Schroyer himself spent part of the school day in his youth in Illinois working as an orderly, and he credits it for shaping the rest of his career.
Over the last two years, Baptist Health Floyd has had apprentices in nursing, surgical technology, imaging, respiratory therapy, and hospital engineering. The program has been a success, but it didn’t come without its challenges.
“The biggest one was getting everybody over the shock of working with younger adults,” Schroyer says. “We’ve had 16- and 17-year-olds working in food service doing meal delivery, but never actually taking care of patients.”
Schroyer says he used his own experience as a high school orderly to help demonstrate just how important it is to give young people a chance. In the first year, the healthcare provider hired some students who failed to show up on time and eventually dropped out. By the second year, it learned how to better screen for successful candidates, looking at not just their grades but also their school attendance records. More than 30 students have participated in the pilot program at the hospital, and Baptist Health Floyd plans to onboard 25 more in the fall when the INCAP apprenticeships begin.
Along with Squillace and the rest of the Healthcare Industry Talent Association, Schroyer is advocating for changes to make the apprenticeships successful long term, not just at his own hospital, but across the state. That includes working with other employers and educational institutions to allow students to take nursing classes in high school and participate in clinicals, with the hope that future apprentices will be able to be licensed practical nurses by the time they graduate from high school.
Schroyer sees the role of the industry talent association as not just a partner with educators, but also as an educator itself.
“The pandemic really hurt healthcare, and everybody’s scrambling and looking at ways to start a solid pipeline to bring people in,” Schroyer says. “We need to find a way to re-educate the public and young people in school and show them that healthcare is a wonderful profession to go into.”