Reach University has been a pioneer in offering apprenticeship degrees in the United States—an increasingly popular approach that allows apprentices to simultaneously earn credit for paid job experience and college classes. The nonprofit university has focused heavily on teachers, training about 3,800 since 2020. 

Now, Reach is expanding to healthcare. This month, it launched the nation’s first Apprenticeship College of Health. The effort is starting with behavioral health, but the university has its sights set on nursing and other health fields as well. 

The Big Idea: Joe Ross, president of Reach, says the expansion was a natural fit. Like in teaching, many high-demand occupations in healthcare require a degree, which can be a barrier to entry for paraprofessionals and other workers in lower-paid positions looking to move up. But upskilling those workers is crucial as health systems across the country struggle with rising demand for care and, in some cases, severe shortages of workers. 

“Every county in the country has a school system, and almost every county has a healthcare system,” Ross says. “These are the jobs that are available to people that make a difference, not just for one’s own livelihood, but also their community. So it makes a lot of sense for us to step into healthcare.”

Growing Into Healthcare

The Apprenticeship College of Health is launching first in Washington state, partnering with the Healthcare Training Fund, a nonprofit partnership between hospitals, healthcare systems, and the state’s largest healthcare union. For years, the training fund has sponsored apprenticeships in physical healthcare. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, it branched out to behavioral health as hospitals reached capacity with COVID patients, as well as those suffering from mental health crises. 

Stackable Credentials: The first cohort, about 25 students, will earn Reach University’s associate of arts in liberal studies, the same degree offered in the teacher pathway but with a focus on social science. The apprenticeship and degree will qualify them for jobs as substance use disorder professionals, an occupation in high demand in Washington.

The eventual goal is for the associate degree to stack into bachelor’s and master’s degree programs, subject to accreditor and state approval. And learners should be able to complete the whole sequence in five years.

“The intent is for it to be an accelerated pathway because it’s year-round,” Ross says.

While Reach provides the education, the Healthcare Training Fund addresses a perennial challenge in creating new apprenticeships: employer buy-in. Getting employers on board is particularly difficult in behavioral health because many providers are stretched to capacity and operating with limited budgets. Funding from the Washington-based Ballmer Group has offset some of the cost of investment for employers. 

And in just a few years, the training fund’s efforts have proven successful, says executive director Laura Hopkins. More than 50 employers have participated in the healthcare apprenticeships, and all but one have continued.

Hopkins describes the partnership with Reach as “kismet.” Hopkins worked in the trades as an airplane mechanic before switching to higher education and job training, and she is a strong proponent of work experience counting for college credit. 

“My passion is giving people recognized college credit,” Hopkins says. “To me, this is about blue collar-white collar bias in our culture. With Reach, we agree that there is value in what people learn on the job, and a large portion of their college credit is going to come from what’s happening there.”

What’s Next

Reach expects to train at least 1K people in behavioral health apprenticeships in the next five years. And to meet that goal, they’ll need to expand beyond Washington. Ross says the university is looking for continued philanthropic funding to grow—and keep the costs minimal, or even free, for students. 

“There are lots of teachers’ colleges across the country,” Ross says. “We hope there will be many apprenticeship colleges of health, too, and that we will be the first. But the fact that we are the first means that we’re treading into unknown territory, and we’re looking for all the kinds of support you would expect us to need to be successful.”

Ross also says Reach is actively looking into the possibility of offering apprenticeship degrees in nursing and other healthcare fields, though there is no firm timeline. Leaders at Reach and the Healthcare Training Fund have visited Alabama, which has led the way in nursing apprenticeships in the country, and they hope to replicate its success in other states.

For now, though, the focus is on addressing workforce shortages and barriers to economic mobility in behavioral health, including the cost of degrees. 

Looking Ahead: Anthony Carter, director of practice improvement and consulting at the National Council for Mental Well-Being, says apprenticeships in the field are steadily growing in pockets around the country. One, a master’s degree apprenticeship program for clinical mental health counseling at the College of New Jersey, has set the stage for Reach’s future expansion into stackable apprenticeship pathways. 

“I think it’s the way of the future,” Carter says. “The four-year plus two-year higher education model does not work for everyone, and we have such a shortage that we’ve got to think creatively about how we move people into these roles and get them skilled up and credentialed and working along the way.”