Indiana teens combine high school, apprenticeship -- but programs are “infinitesimally small”

Elkhart, Indiana is leading a movement to start apprenticeships in high school, writes Kavitha Cardoza on the Hechinger Report.

Ty Zartman on the job at Hoosier Crane.

Ty Zartman, a straight-A student who didn't want another four years of schooling spent his mornings working at a crane manufacturing and repair business. He spend his afternoons at the high school taking academics, including Advanced Placement English and U.S. government. In June, he started full-time at Hoosier Crane as a field technician, earning $19 an hour. He could be earning $50 an hour in five years, says his boss.

About 80 students in the area did youth apprenticeships this year "in fields such as health care, law, manufacturing, education and engineering," writes Cardoza.

Indiana hopes to create 50,000 high school apprenticeships by 2034.  President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April calling for 1 million new apprentices nationwide.

"This 'earn and learn' model is taking hold in part because of deepening disillusionment with four-year college, and the fact that well-paying jobs that don’t require bachelor’s degrees are going unfilled nationally," Cardoza writes. But, unlike in Switzerland and Germany, few young people start apprenticeships in high school.

The number of youth apprenticeships is still “infinitesimally small,” said Vinz Koller, a vice president at Jobs for the Future. According to one estimate, there are 20,000 youth apprentices, 17 million high school students. 

Litzy Henriquez Monchez, 17, apprentices in human resources at a company of 50 people, earning $13.50 an hour. “I deal with payroll, I onboard new employees, I do a lot of translating," she said. She's earned a certificate in HR skills, and the company will pay for her to attend community college if she continues there.

"Attracting employers has proven to be the biggest challenge to expanding youth apprenticeships — in Elkhart and beyond," writes Cardoz. Elkhart schools had 20 employers this year and have signed up 28 for next year, but only a third of interested students will get an apprenticeship.

Deb Fillman has started her dream job at the age of 59. She makes bagels. "In less than a day at the bagel shop, I saw more professionalism, dedication, and joy than I have in any workplace in decades," she writes on her The Reason We Learn substack. She bakes in the morning and tutors in the afternoon at Cogito Learning Center.

If she'd gone to culinary school, instead of to a selective college, she might have been a lot happier, she writes. But she thought college was the only option.

Her advice to parents: "Not every job worth doing requires a college degree, and not every child needs one to build a good life. College isn’t a golden ticket — it’s just one path, and sometimes not the right one. We’ve spent decades pushing young people away from work that’s meaningful, practical, and often better paid than the desk jobs we train them to covet. Worse, we’ve made them feel like failures for wanting anything else."