State-Led, Federal Impact

A new apprenticeship project, backed by the Labor Department, aims to create more consistent standards across states for training, must-have skills, and what counts as a high-impact job. Also, confusion persists around the federal move to bar undocumented students from college career and technical education. (Subscribe here.)

Growing Apprenticeship Amid Federal Freeze

The U.S. Department of Labor is backing a new initiative focused on helping states get on the same page about apprenticeship, including what count as in-demand jobs—and what people need to know to do them. 

The Backdrop: The move was announced several days before the government shut down this week over a spending impasse in Congress. Most workforce grants and cooperative agreements through the Labor Department will continue for now, according to guidance put out by the agency, although that could change the longer the shutdown continues. The Labor Department has already furloughed 76% of its workforce, while it’s 87% at the Education Department, according to The New York Times.

The shutdown is yet another sign of the precariousness of doing business with the federal government, following on the heels of the Trump administration’s widespread civil service layoffs, grant terminations, and contract cancellations, which have affected a range of education and workforce training programs.

These moves have created challenges for the administration’s stated goal of increasing the number of registered apprentices to 1M a year.

States in the Lead: Amid the mixed signals, though, one thing is clear: Many expect states to take the lead on apprenticeship and in education more broadly. Already, a growing number of states were moving to a state-led apprenticeship model. 

The idea with the new initiative is to create some consistency across that work, making it easier for companies, colleges, and intermediaries to start apprenticeship programs and operate them across borders—and making it possible for learners to apprentice in a state like Indiana but land a job in Ohio. Right now, the registered apprenticeship system is too disjointed and opaque for that to reliably be the case.

“The credential you earn at the end might as well just say ‘Credential’ on a piece of paper, because it doesn’t mean anything,” says Josh Laney, who will be heading up the new project. “People need to see what’s behind it.”

The initiative, dubbed the National Project on Apprenticeship Standards and Interoperability (PASI), has $12.5M in federal funding through a cooperative agreement with the Labor Department. It will run for four years and will be led by the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), in partnership with the Alabama Commission on Higher Education.

A related initiative, led out of Colorado, will focus on expanding pre-apprenticeship and better integrating it with career and technical education in high school as well as with postsecondary programs.

Specific goals for PASI include:

• Developing occupation-specific frameworks for quality on-the-job training, related technical instruction, and the skills acquired during an apprenticeship that can be adopted across states.

• Understanding and articulating the competencies embedded in apprenticeship programs, to increase alignment with traditional higher education and to better enable degree apprenticeships or allow learners to stack credentials.

• Further developing and improving the federal database of approved apprenticeship programs to create a clearer hierarchy of best-in-class approaches that are accepted in a wide number of states.

Laney, a well-known leader in the apprenticeship field, left the Alabama Office of Apprenticeship earlier this year to head up the new initiative and to grow C-BEN’s footprint in work-based learning more broadly. PASI will build on the organization’s existing work helping states, including Tennessee and Washington, to expand apprenticeships in high-need fields like teaching and to integrate them with degree programs. C-BEN also was integral in helping Alabama build its skills-based talent marketplace.

“The registered apprenticeship work is nested under a broader work-embedded-learning strategy,” says Lisa McIntyre-Hite, executive vice president and chief operating officer at C-BEN. “We want to enable a skills-based ecosystem that can acknowledge your competencies regardless of where they’re learned or earned.”

The Model: Laney led Alabama’s move from federal management of apprenticeship to a state-led system and helped build processes for prioritizing apprenticeship funding for jobs that are both in high demand and provide economic mobility. The new initiative will build off Alabama’s five-part test for high-impact jobs to offer states, intermediaries, and registration agencies a clearer framework for evaluating apprenticeship investments. 

“Nationally, no such thing exists,” Laney says. “We’re going to quarterback the process of getting all the states together and essentially arguing until we’re satisfied about, ‘What is a high-impact job?’”

States won’t be required to follow the guidance on in-demand jobs or training standards coming out of PASI, but Laney hopes many will, since they’ll be invested in the process. Greater coordination is needed, he says, to provide clarity to employers, colleges and other training providers, and learners themselves.

The Kicker: “If we don’t have a consistent framework we’re all operating in, the state-led effort is going to blow up in our faces,” he says. —By Elyse Ashburn

Banning Undocumented Students in CTE 

More than two months after the Education Department announced plans to lock out undocumented students from postsecondary career and technical education, colleges largely remain confused on how—or whether—to proceed and fearful of the impact this could have on students and their enrollment numbers. 

The change stems from an executive order earlier this year to deny public benefits to undocumented immigrants. The new interpretation of federal benefits includes Perkins funding for career and technical education at the postsecondary level. Adult education programs were also targeted. 

K-12 CTE courses are protected for now under a long-standing Supreme Court ruling that states can’t prevent undocumented students from attending a public school, but it’s unclear how dual enrollment might be impacted. 

A Call for Clarity: Perkins funding doesn’t go to individual students, but rather is used to build CTE programs, buy equipment, and even support professional development. This makes the new mandate difficult to implement and raises more questions than answers. 

“The notice of interpretation is at odds with decades of how this policy has been understood,” says Corinne Kentor, manager of research and policy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “People don’t quite know what to do with the notice and what exactly their obligations might be.”

Kentor has heard from colleges taking a range of approaches, including some that are reviewing programs. Others are holding off on doing anything until there is further guidance from the administration, which is what Kentor’s organization advises.

Following the announcement, a group of organizations including the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) compiled a three-page list of questions for Education Secretary Linda McMahon asking for clarity. Questions include how the department distinguishes between direct and indirect public benefits if, for example, Perkins funds are used to purchase equipment that is broadly available to all students. It also includes questions about braided funding, institutions’ roles as sponsors for registered apprenticeships, and enforceability. So far, McMahon has not responded.

These questions came directly from members of the organizations, says Alisha Hyslop, chief policy, research, and content officer at ACTE. Many were also concerned about the logistical hurdle of finding out the immigration status of all students—a question many institutions don’t ask. 

“It creates a lot of confusion and uncertainty about how these funds can be spent,” Hyslop says. 

Dual-Enrollment Dilemma

One of the biggest questions that has emerged is how the new interpretation of Perkins funding might impact dual enrollment. Most high school students participating in dual enrollment take general education classes, not CTE courses. But in recent years some states, including Texas, have worked to close this gap. 

John Fink, senior research associate and program lead at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, says the notice from the Education Department could derail some of these efforts because schools and colleges can’t shoulder the expense of CTE courses, which often require expensive facilities and equipment, on their own. 

“If the federal support was questioned or felt precarious, then that could stymie the growth of dual enrollment as an on-ramp into career-technical programs offered by community colleges,” Fink says.

Dianne Lassai Barker, deputy executive director of policy and program for the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, says she’s heard from many institutions that they are waiting to see if the administration will clarify how the policy is to be enacted. In the meantime, many are leaning on their state agencies to clarify policies on undocumented students. 

Some states have already required students to prove they are citizens or legally documented immigrants to participate in dual enrollment, while others don’t collect residency information at all. 

Texas Bellwether: In Texas, the Perkins change comes on the heels of another blow for undocumented students in higher education. Two decades ago, Texas became the first state to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition for higher education, but in June the state reversed that decision.

Dual enrollment, including in CTE courses, has exploded in the state in recent years. The ruling could undermine the ability of students to fully benefit from dual credit and complete their postsecondary credentials after graduating high school due to the significantly higher cost. What happens in Texas as a result could be telling for what happens in the rest of the country, at least in red states.

Jonathan Feinstein, Texas state director at the Education Trust, says parsing how the new state and federal restrictions apply is made more difficult by efforts to make high school and college more seamless. 

The Kicker: “What constitutes a postsecondary program in an era where our education systems, especially here in Texas, have increasingly tried to blur that line?” Feinstein says. —By Colleen Connolly

Open Tabs

No Jobs Apocalypse
The overall U.S. labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption in the 33 months since ChatGPT’s release, according to a new report by researchers from the Budget Lab at Yale and Molly Kinder at the Brookings Institution. However, the findings do not suggest that AI hasn’t had any impact, writes Kinder, noting that the analysis complements and is consistent with emerging evidence that AI may be contributing to unemployment among early-career workers.

Walmart on AI
The AI transformation means that Walmart’s head count of 2.1M global workers will remain flat even as the company’s revenue grows, The Wall Street Journal reports. “It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job,” CEO Doug McMillon said last week. Walmart is assessing where additional education and training can help its workers. “Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody to make it to the other side.”

Exposure of Office Workers
Roughly half of lower-income workers with high-AI-exposure jobs work in office and administrative support occupations, Elizabeth Kneebone, AVP of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said during a recent event. In addition to describing research by the SF Fed, the gathering featured a panel discussion on how workers, workforce development leaders, and employers are anticipating AI’s impacts.

Demand for Radiologists
Radiology is well-suited to job displacement by AI, yet demand for human labor across the field remains stronger than ever, Deena Mousa, lead researcher at Open Philanthropy, writes in Works in Progress. AI models struggle to replicate their performance in hospital conditions. They also face legal hurdles and replace only a small share of a radiologist’s job. The occupation is an example of how AI may not dominate every field in its first years of adoption.

Unified Tech Ecosystem
Miami’s strategy to prepare the local workforce for the AI transformation is anchored by a unified vision shared across the tech ecosystem—spanning education, industry, government, and philanthropy, according to a case study from the U.S. Department of Labor. Employers have acted as co-designers for training programs like Miami Dade College’s applied AI courses and degrees, which have exceeded enrollment expectations.

Industrial Policy
The CHIPS and Science Act has boosted employment more than many expected, according to a paper discussed at a Brookings Institution event. Researchers found that the roughly $53B investment created between 42,465 and 54,385 jobs while increasing wages in 149 U.S. counties with semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Employment and wages began rising before the CHIPS Act was passed, in anticipation of the investment.

Workforce Pell
A strong state data infrastructure will be crucial for short-term credential programs to demonstrate that they meet the earnings threshold under Workforce Pell, according to Tristan Stein and colleagues at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Noncredit programs pose a particular data challenge, writes New America’s Iris Palmer. Louisiana’s Bossier Parish Community College shows how to connect credit-bearing and noncredit systems.

Job Moves
Walter L. Simmons has been appointed acting secretary of the newly created Maryland Department of Social and Economic Mobility. The agency will support social equity programs across state government while also streamlining Maryland’s approach to supporting small and disadvantaged businesses, wrote Simmons, who since 2018 has led Employ Prince George’s, Inc., the county’s principal economic development entity.

Lexi Anderson has been hired as senior director of strategic partnerships and initiatives at the Education Commission of the States. Anderson was associate vice president of philanthropy at InsideTrack after a previous stint at ECS.

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