Apprentice Nation: How the "Earn and Learn" Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America

Ryan Craig

Nov 2023 · BenBella Books

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College isn’t for everyone. It’s time to challenge the status quo and embrace the potential of apprenticeships in tech, healthcare, finance, and more—which can provide a sustainable pathway to economic opportunity.

For decades, college has been the only respectable way to access the world of work, despite paralyzing tuition and a dire lack of practical
skills that has left 40 percent of college graduates underemployed, unfulfilled, and struggling to repay student loan debt.

Education and workforce expert Ryan Craig explores how a modern apprenticeship system will allow students and job seekers to jump-start their careers by learning while they earn—ultimately leading to greater workforce diversity and geographic mobility.

With a deep dive into the history behind America’s outdated college system, Craig reveals:

• The origins of the student debt crises and admissions scandals
• Why apprenticeships are an effective pathway to career opportunity
• What America can do to catch up with other nations making apprenticeship opportunities broadly available
• Where students and job seekers can go to land an apprenticeship

Featuring a directory of US apprenticeship programs by industry and location, Apprentice Nation is an accessible blueprint for a country where young Americans of all backgrounds can launch careers in a variety of in-demand fields. With just a few common sense changes to education and workforce development, anapprentice nation will put the American Dream within reach—for everyone.

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Ryan Craig is a managing director atAchieve Partners. Ryan’s commentary onwhere the puck is going in education and theworkforce regularly appears in the biweekly Gap Letter, Forbes, and Inside Higher Education.He is the author of A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College, which describes the crit-ical importance of last-mile training and the emergence of boot camps, income share pro-grams, and staffing and apprenticeship models as preferred pathways to good first digital jobs,and was named in the Wall Street Journal as onethe Books of the Year for 2018. Ryan’s first bookwas College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education, which profiles the comingshift toward competency-based education andhiring. Ryan is a cofounder of Apprenticeshipsfor America, a national nonprofit dedicated toscaling apprenticeships across the US economy.Previously, Ryan led the education and trainingsector at Warburg Pincus. His prior experiencein higher education was at Columbia University.He began his career at McKinsey & Co. Ryanreceived a bachelor’s degree summa cum laudeand Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University, andhis law degree from the Yale Law School.