While apprenticeships are gaining popularity as an alternative to college, demand far exceeds availability.
Matthew Atha does steel work at Ironworkers Local 29 during an apprenticeship in Dayton, Ohio. Joey Cook was 17 and a junior in high school when he heard about a way to learn a profession while getting paid: by landing an apprenticeship, a path into the workforce that everyone was suddenly talking about as an alternative to college . 'I didn't want to go get an associate degree,' he says.'I didn't want to get a bachelor's degree.
' Cook wanted a certification in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, an in-demand field in his rural Texas hometown of Hamlin. An apprenticeship would lead to that. But when he began making inquiries, he was told that if he wanted an apprenticeship, he'd have to find it himself.His disappointment was brief; a local HVAC company happened to be looking for apprentices, and hired him.'It was perfect timing,' Cook recalls. He sailed through the training and now, at 20, is working at the company full time. But Cook's experience also spotlights a big hitch in the movement for apprenticeships, even as they're being pushed by policymakers and politicians of all stripes and expanded beyond the trades to jobs in tech and other industries: Demand for apprenticeships is outpacing their availability. 'Those employers are really dang hard to find,' says Brittany Williams, chief partnerships officer at Edu-REACH — it stands for Rural Education Achievement for Community Hope — the nonprofit organization that now works to find apprenticeships for students in and around Hamlin, including at the high school Cook attended.Apprenticeships combine paid on-the-job training with classroom time. Increasing their use has bipartisan support and was a rare subject of agreement between the presidential candidates in the recent election. They've also benefited from growing public skepticism about the need for college: Only 1 in 4 adults now says a four-year degree is extremely or very important to get a good job, the Pew Research Center find
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