COLOGNE, Germany – Marvin Rockenwind was ambivalent about going to university, but it was considered a must at the elite high school he attended.
After six years, including once dropping out and then returning, Rockenwind left university for good. He then took an apprenticeship in computer programing that set him on a successful career path.
Today, Rockenwind, 32, is an IT consultant and team leader at a consulting company. Being in a field that often values experience over degrees has worked to his advantage.
“Some on my team have a bachelor’s or master's degree,” he said of the people he supervises.
Students who drop out of university in Germany, or other European countries with dual-education systems, have somewhat of a safety net: 3 to 3 ½ year apprenticeships to train for good-paying jobs when higher education doesn’t work out. While many in Europe do apprenticeships in high school, they can be done at any age. In the United States, pre-apprenticeships are offered in high school, often with no direct path to a good-paying job after graduation.
College dropouts in the U.S. also can pursue paid apprenticeships. However, with no dual-education system here, there are far fewer of them. With limited vocational education in the U.S., many who drop out of college don’t know apprenticeships are an option. Many of these dropouts end up in dead-end jobs, while often saddled with some college debt to repay. In Germany, college is free.
There is a nascent movement to make vocational education in the U.S. as viable as it is Europe. Models include Early College Early Career, in which about 80 high school students in Greater Cleveland take college courses and do paid internships with manufacturers. Nationally, the Trump administration’s goal is to both expand the number of apprenticeships and industries that have them. The Labor Department earmarked $150 million in grants to support the mission.
Cathrine Meyer, 23, was an engineering student often getting the equivalent of D grades. Counselors suggested she switch to an easier major.
So, she left college and started a technical product design apprenticeship last fall.
Meyer’s teacher at the Vocational College for Technology in Düren, Germany, Marcus Gompelmann, said he has had several students who left university for apprenticeships. There are even programs to nudge lagging college students to take apprenticeships, he said. They don’t face the same pressures often forcing their American peers to drop out: exhausting financial aid or parental refusal to continue paying tuition.
Apprenticeships aren’t viewed as settling, because they often offer pathways to careers with salaries similar to those requiring degrees, Gompelmann said. For example, he said Meyer is positioned to have a promising career as a technical product designer when she finishes her apprenticeship in two years.
Is college best?
The American education system has often promoted college prep over vocational education because higher education is thought to offer the surest pathway to a good-paying job. Studies often don’t confirm this, said Katherine Caves, a researcher at the Swiss Economic Institute in Zurich. She points to the work by Uschi Backes-Gellner at the University of Zurich showing that students aren’t disadvantaged by taking apprenticeships.
Essential to such outcomes is that the Swiss system creates pathways from vocational education to college, she said. About 70% of Swiss high schoolers take dual education, but more of them end up getting four-year degrees than their U.S. counterparts.
Nearly 36% of the U.S. population between 25 and 64 has at least a bachelor’s degree, Caves cited Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data. Another roughly 10% have an associate’s degree. Nearly 43% of their Swiss counterparts have at least a bachelor’s degree.
In Germany, 57% of high schoolers are in dual education. Only about a quarter of the German population between 25 and 64 has at least a bachelor’s degree. Caves said that is because the German apprenticeship system is not as “permeable” as the one in Switzerland.
“If the system is permeable you go from having one narrow pathway to higher/further/tertiary education to having lots of wider pathways that people can enter and exit multiple times,” she wrote.
Perhaps the most ambitious new vocational model in the U.S. is CareerWise Colorado. It is the only state-level youth apprenticeship program, Caves said.
Those concerned with closing the skills gap in the U.S. are excited to learn about new approaches to create multiple pathways for students, she said. They acknowledged college wasn’t for everybody, but really couldn’t offer any viable alternative. Voc-Ed here, as its currently structured, often doesn’t offer students a career path.
“When the only way up in the education system is college, it’s always going to be the best thing you can do,” wrote Caves, who is American. “At the same time, when Voc-Ed is a dead-end road and it starts to be used as a repository for ‘those kids,’ a responsible education reformer is probably going to want to get rid of it entirely.”