How can we scale earn-and-learn opportunities?

All Americans should have a fair chance to access a quality job without taking on a massive student loan burden or getting stuck in a low-wage, dead end job. While many of the United States’ peer countries have partnered effectively with employers to offer earn-and-learn options like apprenticeships on a grand scale, the U.S. continues to rely almost exclusively on traditional four-year college degrees as the primary path to a good job—leaving many workers and learners behind. Significant hurdles and policy barriers undermine efforts to spread and scale earn-and-learn opportunities. If U.S. innovators are to succeed in making earn-and-learn opportunities more available and more meaningful for learners and employers, they need a shared vision and language for success.

Brookings and New America’s Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship held an event February 21 at 2 p.m. with leaders in Alabama, Colorado, and Indiana about how they are creating enabling policies to scale earn-and-learn opportunities. The leaders shared an overview of what they have accomplished in their states to scale earn-and-learn opportunities; what they learned from the other states in the community of practice; remaining challenges; and how they hope to build upon this work in the future.

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