Building New Apprenticeship Programs A Briefing Paper for the California Apprenticeship Initiative

This resource documents the experiences of employers, educational institutions, program partners and participants relative to the implementation of CAI. The researchers conducted extensive interviews with these individuals and entities to inform this resource. Apprenticeships have recently garnered attention in policy circles because they benefit both employers and apprentices in ways that other types of job training do not. Employers gain skilled workers at the end of the training and, during the apprenticeship, apprentices are contributing to the productivity of the employer organizations. Further, since employers are providing the on-the-job training (OJT) component of apprenticeships, they can better ensure the training meets their needs. Apprentices benefit because they gain skills and work experience, do not have to pay for their classroom training, and are paid by their employers. Despite these benefits, registered apprenticeships in California are concentrated almost entirely in a few industries that employ only a small percentage of the state’s workforce. For example, in 2016, 70% of registered apprenticeships in California were in the construction trades, even though the construction industry only employs 5% of the state’s workforce. By contrast, less than 1% were in manufacturing, transportation, and health care occupations combined, even though approximately 18% of the State’s workers are employed in those industries.

The CAI grant program, led by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, was created to help address this imbalance by establishing more apprenticeship opportunities in underrepresented occupations, as well as to increase diversity of apprenticeship participants. Over three rounds of funding between 2016 and 2018, the Chancellor's Office awarded 40 grants to community colleges, school districts, and their partners to establish new apprenticeship programs in industries where apprenticeships are uncommon.

The researchers found the CAI effort to be effective in establishing apprenticeships in industries where they are uncommon and in increasing diversity among the State’s apprentices with the following key outcomes noted:

• Employer partners were necessary for designing apprenticeship programs, and identifying these partners early was helpful.
• Effective strategies for identifying and engaging employer partners included extensive and persistent industry networking and collaboration with groups of employers.
• Program staff and leaders with deep industry knowledge, extensive professional networks, and effective communication skills were more effective at employer engagement than staff without these characteristics.
• A thorough understanding of the requirements and competencies for a job and the relationship of those requirements to an employer’s general workflow helped ensure that an apprenticeship program would be designed successfully.
• Integrating college certificates and industry certifications into apprenticeship programs was valuable because the skills that apprentices gained became more portable.
• Community colleges and school districts were able to effectively establish new apprenticeship programs and serve as classroom training providers.
• Employer staff members who served as mentors played a key role in program success.
• The sequencing of classroom training and OJT worked well when instruction about a specific task was covered in the classroom shortly before it occurred during OJT.
• Planning for program staff turnover or turnover within an employer partner’s organization was important for ensuring continuity of program operations.

The researchers documented the following recommendation for improving the program captured through their interactions with participating employer partners. One employer indicated that the timing of classroom training and OJT could be better coordinated so that instruction about specific tasks was presented in the classroom just prior to assignment in the OJT experience. Another employer suggested the apprentices should be better screened because some had not been as academically prepared for the classroom training component, as needed. Alternatively, the respondent suggested that an education remediation component could be added to help prepare apprentices for the classroom training.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2018
• Author(s): L.Hebbar; K.Wolff; K.Dunham; J. Oettinger; M. Sarver; I. Gutierrez
• Funding Source: Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies