Resource: Building the Youth Apprenticeship Landscape: Enabling Conditions of Youth Apprenticeship Intermediaries
Integrating work-based and academic learning has been shown to positively impact participants’ career trajectories. Youth apprenticeship, in particular, can be a tool to advance economic mobility for historically marginalized populations. These programs provide students—between the ages of 16 and 24—the opportunity to gain career readiness skills and real-world experience in a specific industry or occupation while earning a wage and completing academic coursework related to their chosen field or pathway.
While youth apprenticeships show promise in delivering opportunity, the youth apprenticeship landscape today is fragmented, and programs vary widely in their design and quality. Thus, the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) set out to define the quality characteristics of an effective youth apprenticeship program and develop a set of guiding principles for high-quality youth apprenticeship to provide clear and common direction to the field.
One of the biggest obstacles to communities looking to embed high-quality youth apprenticeship into their K-12 schools is a lack of connection between educators and employers, which is critical to effectively combine career preparation and industry-specific training. To overcome these challenges, many education and employer partners have looked to intermediaries to step in, build connections across stakeholders, and provide support.
However, there are various factors that impact the ability of intermediaries to expand and advance youth apprenticeship. In this brief, we identify key enabling conditions that can impact intermediaries’ efficacy, including policy environments, partner engagement and collaboration, existing statewide data systems, funding availability and flexibility, and access and connectivity of student supports and advancing equity. This report will unpack how these factors affect intermediaries’ work and they can shift to better support youth apprenticeship and intermediaries. It will also highlight how some intermediaries are still advancing youth apprenticeship amidst varying environments.
