Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, Chancellor, Reach University CEO, The Craft Education System
Note: The authors presented this material as part of a May 17 webinar on Educational Planning for the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. For those who missed it, here are the information and tools discussed.
Many people worry that with innovation in higher education comes lower quality and that with new programs – especially those funded by governments – comes insurmountable and expensive compliance requirements. We believe in naming those fears and then tackling them.
At Craft Education, Reach University, and the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree (NCAD), we prove every day that the quality of the education provided through job-embedded degrees is at least as high as traditional degrees and, in many cases, much higher. That matters to us, as our mission is to make the apprenticeship degree widespread across the U.S., something that simply won’t happen if the same rigorous standards of traditional degrees don’t apply to job-embedded learning. Recipients of apprenticeship degrees in teaching are better prepared to tackle the challenges of classroom teaching as they have more real-world experience connecting theory to practice and have met the same rigorous academic standards as other teachers.
During the webinar, I was joined by Dr. Courtney Hills McBeth, provost and chief academic officer at Western Governors University, which began offering teacher apprenticeships in September 2022.
“WGU has proven repeatedly that we can change lives by creating better pathways to opportunity at scale,” Dr. Hills McBeth told me. “As one of the pioneers of online learning, we know how to provide more and more equitable access to degrees and certificates while maintaining rigorous standards and personalized instruction and mentoring. We expect to see the creation of apprenticeship degrees in many professions with acute job shortages and where there is opportunity to more closely align work and learning to produce better student outcomes.”
These new apprenticeship degrees raise questions for many universities and employers. Let us start with a definition: An apprenticeship degree is earned when workers study at an accredited online university while receiving pay and credit for their full-time employment, combining practical on-the-job experience with a and coursework. This is called job-embedded learning, a way to learn and earn at the same time. Apprenticeship degrees are central in relieving degreed-labor shortages in crucial professions, such as teaching and healthcare, and they represent potential for universities to serve an even greater and more diverse population. Imagine, this model could be an additional education offering for universities to serve adult working learners beyond the well-paved pathways of traditional degrees, online/hybrid degrees, executive education, and/or short-term and professional certificates.
For the degree recipient, it means they continue to earn while getting a degree. They don’t have to put their lives on hold for years, a luxury many talented individuals don’t have. Apprenticeship degrees are affordable, flexible and high-quality, and they are the solution to many of education’s greatest challenges today.
The key takeaway from the webinar is that for colleges and universities to create apprenticeship degrees, they must produce and manage data confirming they are providing quality programs. While this might sound daunting for many administrators, NCAD is here to make it understandable and help you implement your own data-tracking program. We will show you how to create a roadmap to apply for some of the millions of dollars available to develop apprenticeship degree programs, what you will need to implement that roadmap, and how we can help.
Federal Funds Seek to Solve Labor Shortage
In 2022, the Biden Administration announced the launch of accredited teaching apprenticeship degrees, with the goal of developing these degrees in all 50 states. Today, 40 states have programs up and running. The administration also doubled funding to $185 million for accredited institutions to develop apprenticeship programs. Since then, similar efforts to support nursing programs also have been announced.
In addition to these start-up funds, billions of dollars are available through workforce boards to directly support students. These funding sources offer more than is currently spent on Pell Grants each year and could double the funds institutions have available to support underserved populations getting a college degree.
With this funding, the federal and state governments, as well as numerous philanthropic organizations, are seeking to have a dual impact: reduce critical job vacancies and create opportunities for millions of Americans to get affordable college degrees.
Driving Value and Overcoming Complexities
Colleges and universities offering apprenticeship programs must document several essential data items to qualify for this funding. These include regular and substantive interaction with instructors, faculty and third-party oversight, student learning outcomes and other general data reporting requirements.
One of the biggest challenges for institutions that want to create apprenticeship degree programs is that several complex steps are necessary. Apprenticeship programs in trades, for instance, have long had tools to manage data, but these were not built for apprenticeship degrees. How do you prove that a degree candidate is learning in the field? What must they know to justify university credit and education funding for that experience?
The data that accreditation bodies and funders need for apprenticeship degrees must manage the vast number of Regular & Substantive Interaction (RSI) over a longer period, both in the classroom and in the field. Similarly, programs need to monitor and verify the quality of faculty oversight and Third-Party Service Providers (TPS) such as in-classroom teachers. How do you ensure that your university faculty still has the appropriate oversight and decision-making ability when so much of the learning takes place in the employers’ classrooms? The third consideration is that while, as educators, we are used to confirming Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), in the hybrid world of apprenticeship degrees, you also have to make sure your program measures Appendix A Competencies required by the Department of Labor (DoL). In an ideal world, these match up, but ensuring they do is a step we must take.
Three Phases to Funding
Three concrete phases are necessary to launch an apprenticeship degree program that is eligible to receive funding:
- Apprenticeship development
- Approved RAP (Registered Apprenticeship Program) and WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) funded
- Reporting MSGs (Measurable Skills Gains)
The apprenticeship phase starts when an institution decides to offer apprenticeship degrees and begins the process that will lead to becoming a fully-fledged accredited apprenticeship degree-granting institution. This includes defining SLOs and tracking on-the-job learning. For instance, this could constitute giving students real-life learning opportunities in the field and being able to collect the data to include in their performance assessment beyond written assessments or group projects.
Phase two is creating a Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) with the DoL. To do this, you must make an Appendix A that defines all competencies gained by completing the apprenticeship program. This is where it should match up with the SLOs from phase one. You will also need to enter student information into the government portal, the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Data System (RAPIDS), where you will also file your Form 671. This can be done manually or within the Craft Education platform.
Becoming a RAP does not mean you will get WIOA funding, but you must finish phase two first to get WIOA funding.
Finally, in Phase Three, you begin reporting Measurable Skills Gains (MSGs), which should match up exactly with your SLOs, to your local Workforce Board to get funding. This part can feel overwhelming as there are some 500 pieces of data that you must report on each student each quarter to receive the WIOA funds.
Craft Education Is Here to Help
At this point, it might sound like a lot of new work to create all of these data management processes. Most universities, while being used to reporting data to the Department of Education, are not set up to report this data to Workforce Boards. And that’s where Craft Education comes in – to provide the data infrastructure required to automate this new type of reporting.
When we began this journey, no data management tools were available. We created an in-house tool from scratch to manage data. Today, we provide this tool to any institution that wants to offer accredited apprenticeship degrees. It’s always free. There’s no sales pitch, no paid-for add-ons, nothing. It’s a free tool for anyone who wants to use it. We make it available because to accomplish our mission to make the apprenticeship degree ubiquitous, we must ensure that the quality remains consistently high. If you want information on Craft, please contact me directly; I’m sure we can help.
Your First Step
Apprenticeship degrees could solve many of the most pressing problems in higher education and the workforce today. One of the barriers for many educators to creating quality, accredited programs is the need to document metrics and manage the data that demonstrates that quality. We know from experience that this is a complex process, but we also know from experience how to make it easier. Your path to accessing funds that could double your ability to serve lower-income students and help them create a better future for themselves starts with reviewing the webinar. We are always here to answer any questions and lend any support you need, because we are in this with you.
