Located near the sprawling Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, home to Tesla Gigafactory 1, Truckee Meadows Community College trains Tesla employees in advanced manufacturing skills year-round. And while Tesla itself may be polarizing, the growth of the program is undeniable: In 2023, TMCC trained 85 Tesla apprentices; today, completers number 1,000-plus and growing—quickly.

“They choose the courses from our catalog à la carte, and we train their workers five days a week, all day long, in four-week increments,” TMCC president Jeffrey Alexander said of Tesla. Apprentices “come to us, usually 30 to 35 per cohort, and we train them in the basics of automated production, programmable logic control and electromechanical systems, so that they are able to get to work at the gigafactory and really be very capable from day one.”

The manufacturing development program is a registered apprenticeship funded by the Labor Department’s Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs Grant. Intended for certain high-demand occupations that offer above-average pay and benefits, the grant covers participants’ tuition and the cost of instruction, Alexander said. Program completers earn a Tesla Advanced Manufacturing Certification and 11 credits to put toward a degree, should they seek one. Starting in the fall, apprentices will earn the college’s new industrial operations skills certificate.

Leaning into apprenticeship means supporting the community, and programs like the manufacturing development program help break down the “false binary” between work and college—as well as the false narrative that college isn’t worth it, Alexander said. “The truth of the matter is, it’s which college and which program will you choose?”

Such programs also challenge stereotypes about apprenticeships—namely that they’re only in construction, an earn-and-learn catchall for traditionally apprenticeable occupations such as bricklayer, plumber, carpenter and electrician. In integrating robotics, automation, machining and logistics, the manufacturing development program is a bridge to understanding how apprenticeships are evolving to support some of the nation’s fastest-growing industries. These include advanced manufacturing, but also health care, information technology and other business services.

“Apprenticeships are advanced, they are high-tech. They are a very viable strategy for employers to find the right talent that they keep complaining they can’t find,” said Steve Jurch, associate vice president of the Association of Community College Trustees’ Center for Policy and Practice.

Nontraditional apprenticeships are also changing lives, said Jamelia Lawrence, who recently completed a 16-month licensed practical nursing program at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College (MGCCC) and its employer partner, Singing River Health System.

“It’s giving you the opportunity to be what you have always wanted to be but not lose everything you’ve built before getting here,” Lawrence said of apprenticeship, which allowed her to keep working full-time—initially as a registered medical assistant—while pursuing her dream of becoming a nurse. “I wasn’t going to be able to live and take care of my son, my home, if I worked part-time and tried to go to school.”

“These opportunities are once-in-a-lifetime,” she said.

Rewriting the Stereotype

While U.S. apprenticeships have not scaled as they have in some peer nations, they have grown, taking root most firmly in the construction trades. That’s due in part to policies such as the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which required prevailing wages on public works projects, incentivizing the hiring and training of apprentices; the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937, which established a registered apprenticeship system designed around the skilled trades; and decades of grant opportunities for apprenticeships in certain industries.

Today, a plurality (39 percent) of the approximately 700,000 active participants in U.S. registered apprenticeships still work in construction, according to the federal Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Database System. But the landscape is shifting, thanks in part to more recent federal efforts to diversify apprenticeship pathways, a changing economy and evolving cultural attitudes about postsecondary training. Apprenticeships in nonconstruction occupations are now growing faster than those in construction, according to an analysis by Jurch’s center.

Apprenticeships are advanced, they are high-tech. They are a very viable strategy for employers to find the right talent that they keep complaining they can’t find.”

—Steve Jurch, associate vice president of Association of Community College Trustees’ Center for Policy and Practice

“We’re starting to see things flip a little bit,” said John Colborn, executive director of the nonprofit Apprenticeships for America, which is also tracking the rise of nontraditional apprenticeships. “And as an organization focused on the growth of apprenticeship, we know this is critical, in part because we’ve reached—I won’t say saturation level, since there’s always more to be done—but a point where it’s harder to add one more apprenticeship in electrical as opposed to nursing, right?”

One consequence of the diversification of apprenticeship: the diversification of apprentices themselves, including by gender. The number of women apprentices more than tripled between 2014 and 2023, to 108,140, according to an analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

The total number of apprentices surged over the same period. But women as a share still increased, from 9 percent to 14 percent, with gains across all racial groups. And these are just registered apprenticeships tracked by the federal government; unregistered (sometimes called “small-a”) apprenticeships are harder to track but tend to be concentrated in nontraditional fields where women’s participation may be higher.

Regarding racial diversity, 56 percent of all registered apprentices are white. Ten percent are Black, 21 percent are Hispanic, 3 percent are Asian and 1 percent are Native American, according to a separate 2025 analysis of federal data. By age, 38 percent are 18 to 24; 61 percent are 25 to 54. Some 8 percent are military veterans.

Youth apprenticeships—many of which are registered and engage postsecondary partners for sponsorship and instruction—are another area of growth. Groups from the think tank New America to the National Governors Association have endorsed youth apprenticeship as a powerful tool for preventing and addressing disengagement from work and school among learners age 16 to 24.

The picture gets more complicated when looking at outcomes, however. The IWPR found that women’s median hourly wage after completing an apprenticeship was $22, substantially higher than for women with some college, no credential or an associate degree, but well below the $32 rate for men. Why? Efforts to expand apprenticeship opportunities for women have been most successful in lower-paying fields—specifically, in lower-paying positions in nontraditional fields: The largest apprentice occupation for women is nurse assistant, versus electrician for men. Black and multiracial women face the largest wage gaps compared to white men.

Apprenticeships over all suffer from racial equity gaps. Completion rates are higher for white (61 percent) and Asian (62 percent) participants than for their Black (46 percent), Hispanic (55 percent) and Native American (49 percent) peers, according to the 2025 analysis of federal data.

Aileen Ma, policy lead for P-20 pathways to postsecondary success at the nonprofit EdTrust, described the evolution of apprenticeships as a possible corrective to larger representation and equity gaps in the workforce—but only if the growth is intentional. “There is real potential for there not to be occupational tracking like we’ve seen in the past but instead bringing more people into well-paid jobs—and especially importantly, not asking them to bear the cost of tuition or rearrange their lives in a way that they can’t work,” she said.

Apprenticeship experts generally define apprenticeable occupations as those requiring at least one year of combined classroom and on-the-job training and leading to a living wage. But Jurch said the earnings imperative is a real issue in the expansion of apprenticeships, citing the case of nurse assistants. It’s a critical field with high turnover, he said, but it’s also low paying relative to other positions along the nursing career arc.

Jurch’s preferred solution: “If you need to start someone on a pathway, then build an apprenticeship that encompasses all of those positions, so you end up with a high enough level of certification to provide that wage—but you have the ability to become credentialed along the way.”

Jonathan Woodward, executive vice president of teaching and learning and community campus at MGCCC, also emphasized intentional design. “All of our programs should have a pathway to endless opportunity,” he said. “All of our programs should be that way, but certainly apprenticeships should be built from the beginning to have a long growth trajectory.”

Breaking Into Health Care

Health care may be the clearest example of the apprenticeship shift toward nontraditional fields. In 2024, there were 37,346 registered apprentices serving in the health-care industry, a 103 percent increase from 2020, according to one federal update. Sector workforce shortages remain acute, from counselors to nurse practitioners, and the apprenticeship model suits providers with clear long-term needs.

Woodward said that Singing River tried to launch its L.P.N. apprenticeship alone before realizing it needed a college partner with instructional expertise and established credibility with state officials.

“Together we lobbied our state board of nursing and said, in essence, ‘Let us experiment and go through this program one time, and then look at the results of the NCLEX [National Council Licensure Examination] scores to see how our students do.’”

The college’s “secret sauce” was having an experienced L.P.N. faculty member ensure that the apprenticeship was every bit as rigorous as a typical pathway, he added. Average first-time NCLEX-PN passage rates of 90 percent or higher over two cohorts suggest that it is—so much so that the college is now looking at adding a registered nurse apprenticeship program.

Asked whether the expansion of apprenticeship might cut into the college’s traditional nursing programs, Woodward said the institution is “punching way above our weight,” training over 500 nurses at all times, “and it’s still not enough.” Partnerships with employers to upskill cohorts of incumbent workers is therefore a “value-add.”

Lawrence, the L.P.N. apprentice, agreed that different pathways serve different learners’ needs. But she said she feels especially prepared by the apprenticeship model, which subverts most work-based learning models by supplementing work with classroom instruction (not classroom instruction with work): “I have been working with some new nurses for probably the last six months, and it will amaze you the things they don’t know how to do yet.”

She plans on pursuing further training to become a registered nurse and, eventually, a nurse practitioner.

It’s giving you the opportunity to be what you have always wanted to be, but not lose everything you’ve built before getting here.”

—Jamelia Lawrence, licensed practical nursing apprenticeship completer

Like Lawrence, Cody Farley, a behavioral health apprentice in Ohio, described his apprenticeship as life changing. After leaving the Army, he said, he turned to alcohol and heroin to cope with the memories and newfound loneliness. He decided “something had to change” after his wife and children saw him rushed to the hospital to treat an overdose in 2017. Not only did he want to recover, he wanted to help people like him struggling with substance use disorder.

Now 35, Farley is poised to complete an apprenticeship through the Ohio Alliance of Recovery Providers. He did his on-the-job training at the Recovery Council, an alliance member organization and his employer of three years, and expects to obtain an associate degree in addiction studies this semester from Lorain County Community College as a part of the program. The degree makes him eligible to earn a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor II credential in the state of Ohio.

Farley tried college once before in 2016, but he struggled under the weight of his coursework and family responsibilities and relapsed halfway through the semester. The built-in support from mentors and coworkers, on the job and in the classroom, made success feel more attainable this time around.

“The fact that I get paid to do schoolwork—I don’t know of any other program that does that,” he added.

Farley’s program emerged from a stark need: Demand for behavioral health services, including substance use disorder counseling, jumped 353 percent between 2013 and 2019, according to a 2021 report by the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health and Family Services Providers, and more than 98 percent of providers reported struggling to hire staff.

Pam Johnson, director of the Recovery Council, said the shortage had an “astounding” impact on her organization and others, which regularly have positions left open for months on end without licensed workers to fill them.

She recalled asking herself, “How can we be a part of the solution?” Inspiration struck in 2023, when she read a news release from Ohio governor Mike DeWine about new state resources for apprenticeships.

A partnership quickly formed between the alliance and Loraine County CC. Oriana House, an addiction and mental health services provider, serves as the apprenticeship’s sponsor. Apprentices complete 3,100 on-the-job training hours with a field mentor and 915 hours in online courses to earn their addiction studies associate degrees. The program started off tuition-free and now covers all tuition costs after federal financial aid.

The college individually works with students to ensure “they don’t leave here with any debt,” said Hannah DiVencenzo, a program developer there.

Apprentices can also gain credit for prior learning, so some are able to zip through the two-year associate degree program in one year based on their work experience or course credits from past stints in college.

“A lot of them had credit in multiple places,” DiVencenzo said. “They had attempted to go to college throughout their lifetime and didn’t finish.”

Leann Kinser, who completed the apprenticeship program at age 45 and obtained her license this month, said she was one those people. Six years ago, she spent one semester at Ohio State University before the pressures of juggling academics, work and her own recovery led her to stop out. Now, she’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work at Youngstown State University while moving into a new full-time counselor role at the Recovery Council.

“I don’t think that I would have ever went back,” she said. “I really lacked the confidence. I tried it before, and I didn’t make it, and I just never pictured it for me. But this apprenticeship, it gave me such confidence. I just kept on going.”

Today, the program enrolls 46 apprentices, with 11 completers and 16 more slated to graduate this spring. It is transitioning out of its pilot phase next academic year, opening to apprentices beyond the alliance’s member organizations. Already, 41 would-be apprentices are on the wait list.

Johnson said she’s been impressed by apprentices’ “ability to conceptualize care for pretty complicated clients.”

“They really are coming out with a really strong foundation to work effectively in the behavioral health field,” she said. “It’s a big advantage to … have a workforce that includes apprentices, because they’re getting a level of training and supervision and structure that is hard to pull off without an official apprenticeship program.”

Tech and Professional Services

Apprenticeships are evolving beyond health care. MGCCCs’ first foray into nontraditional apprenticeships was a program for bank branch managers. In another example, North Carolina State University has run a registered apprenticeship in artificial intelligence since 2020, when its AI Academy launched as the nation’s first federally funded apprenticeship-based workforce development program. The online program now has roughly 3,000 completers, approaching 120 industry partners—including Starbucks, Harley Davidson, Disney and Blue Cross Blue Shield—and operates in 48 states.

The AI Academy was initially funded by federal grants but is now self-sustaining, with employers generally paying for employees’ training. Workers at nonparticipating employers can still join and be paired with an outside virtual mentor, if the employer signs off. (AI Academy previously used a National Science Foundation grant to pay un- or underemployed workers to participate via externships with an employer partner, but this grant was canceled last year amid the broader federal crackdown on programs supporting underrepresented populations.)

Participants take four 10-week virtual courses over roughly a year. Weekly training includes up to eight hours of workshops and seminars and five mentored hours on the job. More than 30 percent of completers have advanced into higher-level roles, said Carla C. Johnson, executive director of the academy and professor of science education at N.C. State.

“We really conceptualized this as, ‘What would be a deep and meaningful—but not slow—way to upskill current professionals in computer science, or any other area for that matter, to be able to assume mid- to upper-level roles in AI?’” she said. While this kind of training proved to be a useful retention tool for employers during the pandemic, she added, its fundamental value is preparing workers to “be the AI people who will develop whatever the next big thing is, or integrate and build out systems within a company.”

Women make up 35 percent of participants. Roughly 40 percent are people of color.

Completers earn two nationally recognized AI credentials and two N.C. State certificates in AI and data science. Because most participants already have a degree, Carla Johnson said, most participants have not sought additional academic credit.

Carla Johnson said that computer science and other STEM education faculty and industry AI experts design the courses, which are delivered in a flexible, flipped-classroom model. Apprenticeships in general lend themselves to what’s known about how adults learn best, but this program pays particular attention to pedagogy, she noted.

“We took a very evidence-based approach to developing this program to make sure that we incorporated everything we know about how people learn—to make sure that when [apprentices] come out on the other end, they walk away from our program and they’re ready to go do it.”

Martha Dixon, a 40-something academy graduate from Florida who works in financial services, said that “what makes this apprenticeship special is that it closes the gap between knowing and doing. In my opinion, apprenticeships should become more common. We have a workforce that is being asked to adapt to technologies that didn’t exist five years ago, and this could be a way to quickly reskill to meet the need for skills of the future.”

Apprenticeships should become more common. We have a workforce that is being asked to adapt to technologies that didn’t exist five years ago, and this could be a way to quickly reskill to meet the need for skills of the future.”

—Martha Dixon, AI apprenticeship completer

Aon, a national insurance company, turned to registered apprenticeship in 2017 as a solution for its retention problems.

“We had these early-careers roles, we would recruit from the same places time and time again,” said Shantenae Robinson, Aon’s head of U.S. strategic partnerships and early careers, and “the turnover was pretty high.”

Aon designed the apprenticeship to focus on skills and diversity of experience, targeting workers who haven’t graduated college. The two-year program covers tuition, fees and textbooks for apprentices to earn associate degrees in business-related fields at partner community colleges. Wraparound services are provided by local nonprofits. Apprentices can work at Aon in a variety of roles during this period, from information technology to project management to human resources.

“It’s like dating. For two years, you’re figuring us out. ‘Do I like this? Do I want to try this out? Is insurance for me?’” Robinson said. Apprentices who complete the program are offered roles at Aon with potential for career progression, including as associate brokers and account managers.

The goal is for them to stay, Robinson said. But if apprentices do want to leave, they walk away with work experience, a degree and an industry-recognized credential.

Sharon Reid, director of internships and experiential learning at Borough of Manhattan Community College, one of Aon’s partner institutions, said the program is successful because of its “very high-touch” model and close collaboration between the company and the college.

The college developed a risk management insurance concentration to support the apprenticeship program, which now serves other BMCC students, as well. Faculty members carefully monitor apprentices’ academic progress. In the first year, apprentices meet with advisers at least biweekly to ensure they’re on track and receiving any necessary support services.

Aon managers also reach out when apprentices are struggling with “some more developmental needs. Maybe they need to enhance some technical skills. Maybe we need to work on initiative and communication,” Reid said. “We work together as a collaborative in making sure that students get what they need.”

So far, the strategy seems to be working. Of roughly 700 completers across Aon’s apprenticeship offerings nationwide, some eight in 10 chose to remain at Aon. And the program has attracted employees from a wide range of job backgrounds, from former Starbucks managers to workers at Amazon warehouses. The average age of an Aon apprentice is 24, but some are as senior as 60, Robinson said.

Most people don’t think “insurance” when they think about apprenticeships, but any professional company with positions in IT, HR or finance could benefit from this model, she said.

Apprentices “have experience that, even from a manager standpoint, is irreplaceable,” Robinson said.

Growing Tomorrow’s Talent

Across apprenticeship fields, higher education institutions are acting as connective tissue. They not only provide instruction but also navigate complex credentialing and funding landscapes and broker agreements between parties that don’t naturally talk to each other.

“If you want to do apprenticeships, we are the place to go, because we’re not trying to make money on it,” said Woodward, of MGCCC. “We are trying to impact the community. So it seems like a natural fit.”

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Expansion into nontraditional areas, including health care and other highly regulated fields, can increase complexity and red tape and push the boundaries of the model. Ted McCadden, a professor and program director of human services counseling at the Community College of Baltimore County, described his own foray into behavioral health apprenticeship design as coming with a steep learning curve: “If we’re talking about plumbers and electricians, it’s much easier to do that on-the-job training. So we have had to make work what state and federal regulations really are working to prohibit.”

He continued, “We’re doing a lot of front-loading the related instruction, getting folks some basic skills before we send them out into the workplace. When I talk about that in apprenticeship spheres, though, people stop me after that sentence and say, ‘That’s not an apprenticeship’ … So there’s a lot of education that I think needs to happen, and a lot of flexibility within those systems, to differently conceptualize what apprenticeship can be and how that flexibility really allows for some good workforce development.”

Growing pains aside, Colborn, of AFA, encouraged higher ed institutions to embrace administrative sponsorship roles. “There’s real value in taking that on,” he said. Colleges and universities are “going to find that there is a business model for doing this work and sustaining it and growing it.”

Federal investment in registered apprenticeships is accelerating amid a push for a national talent strategy that includes stronger, more integrated workforce development systems. The Trump administration has committed $145 million in pay-for-performance apprenticeship incentives targeting sectors like health care, IT and AI infrastructure; $81 million to connect formerly incarcerated workers with skilled trades, advanced manufacturing, registered apprenticeships and other training; and $175 million in Labor–Education Department TRIO Talent Search funds for registered apprenticeships and other pathways.

“These actions further align the postsecondary and workforce education programs of ED and DOL and will position DOL as the central hub for America’s postsecondary education and workforce development programs,” ED said in a news release about the TRIO grant initiative.

On Capitol Hill, bipartisan legislation would also remove from the post-9/11 G.I. Bill financial disincentives for pursuing apprenticeship pathways.

Learners themselves “are looking for experiential opportunities when they’re in college, and they want to be connected to a job,” Colburn said. Degree apprenticeships, in particular—while still limited in number—are “getting a lot of buzz.”

In Inside Higher Ed’s recent Student Voice flash survey, just 2 percent of current college respondents had participated in an apprenticeship, but 25 percent said it was one of the work-based learning models in which they were most interested. This was consistent across races and genders. By institution type, 37 percent of two-year students and 22 percent of four-year peers expressed interest. This gap between experience and interest suggests unmet need. And most apprenticeship experts agree that the problem is not attracting would-be apprentices, but growing and scaling apprenticeship opportunities for them.

One critical note: While the apprenticeship glow-up is real, the original skilled trades model that may or may not involve a college partner still has a lot to offer—including for men, said Zach Boren, senior vice president for policy and government relations at AFA.

“Especially in an economy where men’s college enrollment and traditional wage growth have lagged, leaving many without skills or purpose, apprenticeships are a critical tool for helping men get solidly into the middle class,” he said. “Federal data shows that journey-level apprentices regularly outpace college graduates in entry-level earnings.”

What has changed, Boren continued, is that apprenticeships are no longer only about the trades, and they’re “one of the most practical ways to prepare people for good, in-demand jobs—especially at a time when many white-collar roles are shrinking due to AI and corporate restructuring.”

Rachel Lipson, co-founder and scholar in residence at Harvard University’s Project on Workforce, wrote a forthcoming book on U.S. geographic “frontier regions” for future jobs—something of a “glass-half-full” take on the AI job-displacement conversation, she said. She’s found that technology infrastructure (think: data centers, batteries, nuclear energy and biotechnology) is creating new opportunities where it’s coming online. And the many technician-level roles in these growing industries require advanced skills training and critical thinking abilities but not necessarily four-year degrees.

Lipson’s book is an expansion of her standing argument that America’s missing productivity strategy is a research-and-develop approach to building human capital amid a “generational opportunity to build a national talent investment strategy that meets the potential of the AI economy.”

As for whether apprenticeship can continue to evolve to meaningfully support such a strategy, she said, “There are a lot of interesting early tests of whether this will be a solution.”