National Apprenticeship Week, April 26 to May 2, focuses attention on earn-and-learn pathways to opportunity. It also underscores a larger truth. Higher education has a work problem.
For decades, the script for upward mobility asked students to do something that, for many, was a financial burden. They should push work to the margins, gain a degree, and then get a job.
That model left many with debt, limited work experience, and reasons to wonder how a college degree and economic mobility fit together.
The apprenticeship degree is emerging as an important answer to that problem. It’s not anti-college. It’s not anti-separation. It treats work and postsecondary education as partners, not rivals.
