How online training is fueling the growth of apprenticeships

Charles D. Morgan

IT’S VERY CLEAR that the whole concept of apprenticeships has definitely caught on in the effort to build a better-trained workforce. From state and local governments to all sectors of industry, Registered Apprenticeships are spreading like wildfire. One of the most amazing things to me is that giant companies that normally do all their own training in-house are now engaging in these more formal apprenticeship programs. And it’s a win-win proposition for both employers and employees. Just as companies and other organizations are finding great benefit to be derived from apprenticeship programs of a more formal nature, the apprentice/employees are gaining more and more badges of accreditation, adding obvious value to their resumés should they ever go on to a different job.

While we talk a lot about apprenticeships these days, I want to focus here on the changing nature of “credentials” that I believe is fueling this growth. If you look at my personal business history, just as recently as 10 years ago the hiring strategy of my company, First Orion, was inevitably to search for somebody who had a college degree—our thinking being that such a person would have a higher likelihood of being a successful employee. We just believed that people who had gone to the effort of getting a degree would not only have a good broad-based education, they would also be a little more well-rounded as a person. That mindset had dominated HR departments pretty much since the end of World War II.

But technology—starting with the Internet—has changed everything. Because of the Internet, excellent occupational training has become available to the masses. And now companies like mine have seen that the combination of available training and the disciplined structure of an apprenticeship program is hugely beneficial in developing people so that they’re productive fast. And developing them for the specialized skills our specific company needs. So, for me personally, apprenticeship programs are a proven commodity. I know they work.

It’s astonishing to consider how fast online training is growing. While this shift has been happening for the past 15-20 years, the rate of online study has recently skyrocketed. According to the online course aggregator Class Central, by late 2023 more than 220 million learners worldwide had enrolled in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses, such as Coursera)—up from just 35 million in 2015. Add to that the proliferation of tech Bootcamps [see sidebar] and employer-backed online learning platforms, and you have the components of no less than a workforce training revolution. And it’s not just benefitting first-timers to the job market; it’s also a boon to all those workforce veterans who want to learn new skills and pivot to new careers.

Look at LinkedIn profiles today. Yes, you’ll still notice traditional symbols of college alma maters—and we’re emphatically not saying that a college degree isn’t desirable for many, many people. But you’ll also see on LinkedIn strings of “certifications” listed—certificates, micro-credentials, and other testaments to the person’s acquisition of online skills. Largely a 21st century development, this reflects a tectonic workforce shift—from employers viewing college degrees as the “gold standard” indicator of a candidate’s readiness, to today’s across-the-board respect for online-acquired skills and competencies.

This allows a whole new influx of talent into the workforce. And if we thought the “effort” of getting a college degree was a testament to a candidate’s ambition, just think what earning these certificates says about a person: There are no football games or sorority parties to relieve the pressure; there’s just the self-discipline of sitting yourself in front of a computer and climbing alone up a learning curve—often late at night, night after night, so as not to interfere with day jobs, dinner preparation, or—for many of the career changers—kids’ bedtimes. To me, that’s an impressive job candidate.

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MY FORMAL EDUCATION was in mechanical engineering, and of course back when I got my college degrees there was no such thing as “an online course.” Even 30 years ago, long after I had become CEO of a growing company called Acxiom, there was the Internet—but “education” was still mostly written…on paper. When I confronted a complex engineering-oriented problem, which was often the case at Acxiom, there were courses I could take, but they were crude, slow step-by-step procedures, and I never watched a single video to learn how to do anything. Instead, I had to consult a reference book and/or figure it out for myself. It was hard learning.

Nowadays, with the vast array of online courses available, it’s not necessary for a company to provide all the instructors itself. And the training programs you can get for your apprentices is as good an education as you can get at any college—I can get Cal Poly’s C++ for a beginner’s course and the University of Michigan’s course on so-and-so and so-and-so, and then get this other paid course in yet-another discipline. So now I’m building out a repertoire of training, which will include some real-world examples that are solving problems in my own company, and for what I get in exchange—tailor-made training for my particular employees—what I pay is a bargain.

That wasn’t available until relatively recently. That’s why apprenticeships were harder decades ago—it was just too expensive to teach these new employees. Now companies of all sizes, from all sectors, can take advantage of this “farmed-out” online training, while retaining the necessary ability to oversee the programs. These platforms make learning flexible, affordable, and often faster than traditional degree programs. All of that benefits the apprentice as much—or more—than it does the employers. Apprenticeship programs, if you notice, are getting longer and longer. While they started at a few months, they’re now going up to a year or even two years sometimes. That’s like a two-year college course—and you get paid to do it.

Even the free instruction is amazing. I’ve been trying to learn Fusion 360, which is design engineering software, and the number of things that are available from the vendor, Dassault, is just astonishing. Dassault has really high-quality software and equally high-quality education supporting it.

The bottom line is that technology is revolutionizing the universe of credentials, which in turn is revolutionizing Registered Apprenticeships. That combination is revolutionizing the entire U.S. workforce. And neither the employers nor the apprentices want it to go back to the way it was before.
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Charles D. Morgan, proprietor of Morgan’s at the Little Red in Heber Springs, is also Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Executive Committee at First Orion.

Sidebar:

Here, thanks to ChatGPT, are some numbers to show the scale of online training today:

• Enrollment growth:
  According to Class Central, as of late 2023, over 220 million learners worldwide have enrolled in MOOCs — up from just 35 million in 2015.
• Microcredential expansion:
  A HolonIQ report (2023) estimated that the global microcredential market would exceed $25 billion by 2025, driven largely by employer demand and lifelong learning.
• Employer adoption:
  A 2022 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 76% of employers see alternative credentials as valuable for hiring, and 55% have hired candidates with them in place of college degrees.
• Bootcamp market:
  The global coding bootcamp market alone was valued at $1.4 billion in 2023, with over 40,000 graduates