Work experience in last-mile education

This post is a part of the Intask to Education series where I’m exploring the changing relationship between education and work. You can read the first post here.

Employers demand that entry-level hiring candidates have more work experience than ever before.

According to a 2017 survey conducted by National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), more than 9 in 10 employers prefer that their candidates have some work experience. The majority of those respondents prefer that their candidates have relevant work experience compared to general work experience.

Traditionally, students have gained work experience from apprenticeships and internships to finalize their last-mile education.

Merriam-Webster defines “apprenticeship” as “an arrangement in which someone learns an art, trade, or job under another.”

“Internship” is a little bit more difficult to define, as employers, educators, and students have a difficult time consistently defining the term. I’ll refer to internships by Dictionary.com’s definition, which is “any official or formal program to provide practical experience for beginners in an occupation or profession.”

Apprenticeships vs. Internships

Upon first glance, apprenticeships and internships seem pretty similar. The exact distinction is more of a semantical debate, and generally, people associate apprenticeships with technical trades and internships with professional careers.

Perhaps a better way to understand the differences between internships and apprenticeships is to understand their contexts.

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships have existed informally for hundreds of years and more formerly over the last century.

Initially, Medieval guilds and early-American craftspeople developed informal apprenticeship programs where experienced laborers could exchange training and lodging for an apprentice’s cheap labor. However, apprenticeships slightly declined following the Industrial Revolution as society required more general factory work and less skilled labor, and trade schools rose to fill part of their place.

In the United States, apprenticeship programs formalized and became regulated with the National Apprenticeship Act in 1937. More recently, a 2017 executive order continued the formalization trend. The executive order defined the modern apprenticeship as “…an arrangement that includes a paid-work component and an educational or instructional component, wherein an individual obtains workplace-relevant knowledge and skills.” It’s important to highlight both the educational and a paid components of these modern apprenticeships.

Internships

On the other hand, internships — as they exist today — are a relatively new concept.

A 2009 article by TIME magazine outlined the history of internships. Medical professionals first used the term “intern” for physicians after World War I. The the term was used to define those with a university degree that couldn’t yet practice, and it eventually made itself into government careers. As the cost of higher education increased and the term “intern” grew in popularity, so did co-ops, programs that permitted students to earn more money during their college careers by taking several months off to work in a position related to their degree. Summer internships became more common in the 1960s following the co-op trend.

While the purposes of internships and apprenticeships are very similar — to help train the next generation of workers — the contexts are entirely different. Internships complement higher education, provide a different learning environment than the classroom, and usually only last a few months. Apprenticeships can last much longer than internships, and they offer an alternative path to higher education that provides the necessary skills to make a career out of a particular technical trade without the more substantial financial commitment of 4-year college tuition.

The changing importance of work experience

Whatever education route someone takes on their last-mile towards entering the workforce, it’s clear that employers want potential job candidates to have had a significant amount of work experience.

An Adecco survey shows that 93% of business executives see apprenticing as a potential path forward to close the talent gap. However, completing a long apprenticeship could be a risky investment of one’s time.

Some renowned scholars from the University of Southern California and the Naval Postgraduate School claim that “…the half-life a learned skill is five years…[meaning that] much of what you learned ten years ago is obsolete and half of what you learned five years ago is irrelevant.” If this is the case, modern apprenticeships must function much differently than their medieval counterparts. After completing an apprenticeship, one can no longer assume they would be able to find stable work for the rest of their life. Instead, they would have to plan their next apprenticeship.

Similarly, a 2013 Chegg study on bridging the country’s talent gap shows that the vast majority of hiring managers believe that students need to complete an internship before they graduate. However, those same hiring managers from the Chegg study think much more needs to be done in last-mile education; hiring managers only believe that 2 in 5 students are ready for the workforce.

It’s clear that the concepts of interning and apprenticing need updates. It’s no longer reasonable to assume that a one-time accreditation and work experience will provide modern employees job stability. It’s also not reasonable to assume that educational institutions will be able to provide stability in fulfilling the needs of the workforce.

What comes after internships and apprenticeships?

The demand for apprenticeships and internships show that society increasingly values a closer connection between education and work.

Traditional apprenticeships and internships need to evolve, and they already are. As last-mile work experiences change from binary states of learning or working into a constant state of learning on the job, we’ll see a surge in platforms, organizations, businesses, and educational models rise to meet the demands of society.

We’ll explore a few examples of these platforms, organizations, businesses, and educational models in a future post.

Wes Wagner is a startup and Spanish enthusiast, future-of-work fanatic, Midwest and Latin American startup ecosystem advocate, and student. He currently helps SaaS companies better monetize at Cheddar.

This publication is part of Wes’s undergraduate honors thesis at the Kelley School of Business.