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Robert Lerman on Apprenticeships

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Speaker 0    00:00:03    Today is June 1st, 2020. And I want to mention that we are recording this in the middle of the pandemic. I asked listeners to be patient. If our audio quality is not up to our usual standards, we're using different equipment and the wifi and the Roberts household is a bit stressed, stretched, and stressed. I also want to mention that every econ talk episode is now up at YouTube. These are typically audio files, but we've started recording video as well. For those who might want to see my pandemic beard, et cetera, just search econ, talk at YouTube and please subscribe. And now for today's guest economist, Robert Lurman of the urban Institute and American university, he's written widely on topics and labor economics. Our topic for today is the young people in America are struggling to find meaningful and productive work and the potential for apprenticeships to make a difference in their lives. Robert, welcome to econ talk. Thank you. Now let's start with the nature of the problem. Um, you know, what's the question that apprenticeships might be answering?  
Speaker 1    00:01:06    Well, apprenticeships answer two questions. One is how to widen the routes to rewarding careers for young people, uh, and also how to improve the match between skills and jobs and careers for companies, uh, making them more productive.  
Speaker 0    00:01:28    And you've been writing about this for a long time. Yes. I found something from 1990. It probably is the first thing you wrote. So that's 30 years ago. Uh, how long you've been interested in, in apprenticeships?  
Speaker 1    00:01:43    Well, uh, about 34 years ago, um, I started being very interested in youth. Um, youth unemployment was my dissertation topic way back in 1970. And, um, I worked at the department of labor. I worked in academic institutions on that question, um, and really got frustrated with the, uh, types of programs that, uh, the labor department was pushing. I thought that, uh, they might be okay for the very bottom group, but, uh, they were missing a large segment of the youth population. Uh, I then learned about the European systems, especially yeah, Germany and Switzerland, and began to think we ought to take a look at them.  
Speaker 0    00:02:42    I think most of us don't really have an idea of what an apprenticeship is, except maybe something we read about from the middle ages and a Guild. Uh, how do they let's start with how they work in Europe, uh, and, and what population they serve?  
Speaker 1    00:02:56    Well, first of all, Europe, uh, is varied. Uh, you have Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, all with excellent programs, uh, that start at relatively young ages could be 15, 16, um, and they combine, um, coursework with on the job learning. Uh, but the on job learning, uh, has what we might call a dual production. It's the production of skills along with the production at the workplace. So they're helping, uh, contribute to out. But, uh, at the same time, uh, the apprenticeships in the U S have traditionally been in the trades, especially the building trades construction. Um, and they start at a much older age, uh, typically a U S apprenticeship start at the age of 26, 27, 28. Um, whereas in, uh, those European countries where apprenticeship is robust, they start in late high school. And when the workers are in this program, so are they getting paid?  
Speaker 1    00:04:22    Yes, uh, apprenticeships are paid. Uh, they involve mentoring by somebody at the workplace, but they also undertake jobs at varying levels of skills. So the apprentices would start out on first day doing some work. It's going to be low skill work, it's beginning. Uh, but over time, uh, their skill levels increase. Uh, their pay levels increase a bit, but, uh, there's a kind of turning point where, um, the pay levels are less than the productivity and that's where the companies are able to recoup some of their investment. And, and what's the, give us an idea of what the pay might be and how long that apprenticeship lasts in a European setting? Yeah. Uh, well, the apprenticeships in Europe last, uh, two to four years, sometimes five, um, depends on the occupation. The wages, uh, are often somewhere around 50% of what a skilled worker would make, but in Switzerland when they start young, it's 20%. So think of a skilled worker, maybe getting 20, $22 an hour and the apprentices getting $4 an hour. Uh, but that's more than they would get sitting in a classroom and they're getting, uh, a lot of investment by the company and their skill. And  
Speaker 0    00:05:59    What do we have any, do we have any, well, let me ask a better question and European settings, what's the role of the government?  
Speaker 1    00:06:08    Well, the government plays a big role in the off job learning. So because these apprenticeships start in late high school and high school here, is it entitlement as it is their, um, the schooling component of an apprenticeship is paid for by the government. The government also has kind of an oversight role, but usually, um, a lot of the governance is taking place with industry associations, sometimes labor groups, uh, especially in Germany, um, and the government has, uh, you know, underlying legislation. Uh, so it's, the funding is mainly the government funding is mainly for the off job learning. Uh, the companies pay the wages, the companies pay for the mentors. Um, and, um, that's, that's the government role. And can anybody, any company start one be a part of it? Uh, well, yes. Although in Germany, uh, things are more regulated than in other places, uh, in Germany and a lot of professions you can't get into them unless you've gone through an apprenticeship. Um, but yeah, any, any company there's, you know, maybe 30, 40% of companies have apprenticeships  
Speaker 0    00:07:40    And the numbers vary greatly in, in your foot. They're all greater than the numbers in the United States. And if I remember correctly, it's, they're about 10 times more prevalent in Europe than they are in the United States is that  
Speaker 1    00:07:57    Let's make sure we talk about Europe as a mix, but yeah, in the robust countries, uh, even England, uh, they are about 10 times what we have,  
Speaker 0    00:08:11    But they're still small. It's only about two to 4%. Is that an accurate number?  
Speaker 1    00:08:15    Well, it's two to 4% of the workforce, but remember, um, it's a big chunk of a cohort. Yeah. So in Switzerland, about 70% of the cohort goes through an apprenticeship. You may call it when you say you may know, but more like 50,  
Speaker 0    00:08:36    Is that because they started a long time ago? I mean, they've started only recently.  
Speaker 1    00:08:41    Uh, no, no. Um, it's just the way the mathematics work out, you know, I mean, it's not a met count of how many have been in an end, an apprenticeship, how many are in it? Right. It's, it's the stock currently in apprenticeships  
Speaker 0    00:08:58    And the number of the United States is less than 1% of fraction of one.  
Speaker 1    00:09:01    Yeah. That's less than a half per cent. Yeah.  
Speaker 3    00:09:04    And  
Speaker 0    00:09:06    What's the reason. So for me, when you, when I hear about it, you know, for me, it seems to be,  
Speaker 3    00:09:12    Uh,  
Speaker 0    00:09:13    It fascinates me that there's been a,  
Speaker 3    00:09:19    Yeah,  
Speaker 0    00:09:20    It's come to be received wisdom in the United States that quote, everyone should go to college. That this strikes me as a really bad idea for many, many reasons. One of which is college isn't for everyone, not everyone is good at what we call college or the skills that to typically acquires in college, uh, as we have pushed more and more people to college through both subsidies in the, in the lending market and in the actual provision of, of, you know, state schooling and so on, we've encouraged people to study things that are not particularly productive. That's not the only reason to go to college, of course, but it is encouraged because the proportion of the population is so much larger. So many of the people who go don't finish, and if you don't finish, the financial gains are quite small. Uh, it seems to me that that was a, a bad, um, path. Do you agree?  
Speaker 1    00:10:19    I absolutely agree. Um, the one thing that people pushing apprenticeship today, uh, point out is that the academic component of apprenticeships often are at the level of some, at least community college core level courses. So the apprentices are taking some academic component. Um, if you look the best apprenticeship program in the United States at scale is, uh, the Newport news shipyard, which takes about 150 to 200 apprentices a year. They are working on the very first day, but it's a four year program with plenty of courses and, um, they have 4,000 applications. So, um, you can combine some positive elements of academic learning through a kind of college experience with a high quality apprenticeship. Um,  
Speaker 0    00:11:35    How old are those students at that, in that particular premises?  
Speaker 1    00:11:38    No, students come out mostly out of high school. They finished high school and, uh, yeah, it's quite, uh, quite amazing that they have sports teams and a lot of the accoutrements of, of a college experience there.  
Speaker 0    00:11:55    So what's the, what's the difference? Let let's back up actually. And let's talk a little bit about the, the, um, post high school educational landscape. So we've got so-called four year BA bachelor's degrees degree programs that are the major state universities. Many of the private universities, we have two year associate degree programs. We have community colleges, which, um, I'm not sure what distinguishes them from the public schools that, uh, at the state level they're, they're cheaper. Um, and they're, they typically don't offer the accoutrements of college life. They're typically for commuters and people living at home. Uh, there's probably a few I've left out, but one of the things that I didn't mention is vocational training and why isn't vocational training a better way to get there from here. Why isn't vocational training for people who don't want to go to college? Uh, aren't good at college don't want to study STEM, can't study STEM that is science, tech, um, math engineering, what's wrong with, you know, vocational training as an apprenticeship alternative. And why isn't that? Why aren't they, why is it vocational training often more widely teaching people how to be plumbers, electricians, and so on?  
Speaker 1    00:13:23    Yeah, well, um, we do have, uh, vocational training. Uh, the high schools have reduced their amounts, but there's still some we have, uh, actually there's a federal act called the Perkins act that provides a billion and a half bucks for, uh, both secondary and postsecondary, uh, vocational training, uh, the community colleges, a number of them do have, um, courses that relate to particular occupations. The problem is that, uh, they're untethered from the labor market, um, and there, and then in two ways, one is, uh, the mix of occupations and the kind of occupational learning. And the other is that many things you really can't learn just at a classroom. Uh, you do need a lot of hands on learning for many occupations, including many of the highest level occupations. You look at doctors and even lawyers. Um, I have a friend that told me that they were hiring these highly paid lawyers out of Ivy league law schools. And they couldn't do anything for a year. No, that's the problem.  
Speaker 0    00:14:52    Yeah. And so the role of work  
Speaker 1    00:14:56    Based learning is critical in my view to, to succeeding, but in, in, in many of the apprenticeships, um, they do need to take, uh, a good, uh, let's say math course or good. And, and the, the positive thing is that it's a much greater level of engagement when they take that course. There's a much greater notion of relevance because they're using it.  
Speaker 0    00:15:28    Yeah. They might also focus on the skills within the math class that would be most useful rather than the most interesting.  
Speaker 1    00:15:35    And, uh, there are a number of what we might call employability skills, which, uh, employers complain incessantly that workers don't have. Uh, but in an apprenticeship, you gradually build those up, uh, with a mentor  
Speaker 0    00:15:54    You're talking about promptness, politeness, uh, problem solving teamwork. Yeah.  
Speaker 1    00:16:01    Knowing exactly how to work with a supervisor, maybe six skin.  
Speaker 0    00:16:08    Yeah. Yeah. Acquiring thicker skin would seem to be an important attribute of, uh, so I mean, it's an attractive idea, um, that has gotten not much traction here in the United States. Uh, one could argue that there were some special interests, uh, obviously professors benefit from having and others administrators benefit from having college, be the default choice for what comes after high school.  
Speaker 1    00:16:36    Um, we would,  
Speaker 0    00:16:39    You could argue that, that our Guild, the economist skills likes the current situation. Um, but what do you think is stopping the apprenticeship idea from getting more traction here in the United States? Is this sounds good on paper? I have some criticisms of it that I'll raise it a minute, but on paper, it sounds great. Well, what's wrong? Why isn't it happening?  
Speaker 1    00:17:03    Well, I think we have to go back to what happened, uh, in the late eighties, early nineties, uh, because that's, you know, uh, one of a, kind of a natural experiment. Um, there was a lot of interest, um, and my 1990 article and some others were, um, helping generate that interest, um, to the point where, um, uh, president George H w Bush proposed the national youth apprenticeship act of 1992. And this was an idea to use the term youth apprenticeship because in America, most were in construction and started much later. Um, and there was a lot of enthusiasm at the time. Uh, bill Clinton had a little program in Arkansas on youth apprenticeship. And when he came in, there was a lot of interest, but what happened was the legislation, um, pretty much knocked out, use the apprenticeship. It was called the school to work, uh, opportunities act.  
Speaker 1    00:18:18    It had had all kinds of very thin types of vocational work oriented, uh, learning, uh, like, uh, job shadowing and things of that sort. Um, and one reason was that people said, well, you know, vocation ledge, it's going to be too much like vocational education, which was tracking, taking kids that could have done very well in college, pushing them off into some vocation. And that basically, um, was one of the two elements that caused this enthusiasm for youth apprenticeship to degenerate into, uh, something was called work based learning. And, um, I, I mean, uh, school, the work, uh, oriented program, the other element was that the construction unions had what they thought was their ownership of apprenticeship with an office of apprenticeship and, uh, them being on many state boards and national boards. And they didn't really want competition even though it was going to be in other fields. Sure. So the result was apprenticeship was barely mentioned in that legislation. Uh, but in the last few years, uh, we have had some renewed interest, uh, late in the Obama administration. And now in the Trump administration, there's been some funding. Um, and, uh, we're working on it now to try to regenerate interest. I think the reason for the regeneration of interest is what you were referring to earlier. This college, for all things doesn't work and people are beginning to realize it's a costly failure. Is there,  
Speaker 0    00:20:20    Is there a potential for this, uh, you know, potential rebirth to start at an earlier age, other than post-college. And one of the attractions to me of the teenage model is that it gives people a flavor of what that life would be like at a time when it's relatively inexpensive to find out what that life would be like, whatever it is.  
Speaker 1    00:20:41    Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, uh, the Congress now has authorized more money for apprenticeship. The amount that, uh, the federal government helped with over the years was trivial. Uh, and the number of people in the office of apprenticeship went from about 300 to 130. The amount of money spent was like 20 to $25 million, which, you know, there was one person in Indiana, two people in Iowa, Ohio run entire state. Um, so now there has been some funding and their funding intermediaries, including the urban Institute, uh, to help stimulate, uh, youth apprenticeship and other kinds of apprenticeships. And, um, we're learning a lot. Um, the key, the key is helping employers understand how to do apprenticeship. Um, one of the more interesting things that rekindled my interest was the success of England and the success of South Carolina. And what happened in England was they let their apprenticeship program atrophy.  
Speaker 1    00:22:08    And then, um, Tony Blair got things started again. Uh, Cameron was a big prime minister. Cameron was a big supporter of apprenticeship and they went from about 150,000 to 850,000 in a period of about eight, nine years. And one of the ways they were able to do it was to provide subsidies to private for often for profit workplace training organizations that cited in their interest to stimulate companies to start apprenticeships. And they did it. And, um, South Carolina is another interesting example because in 2007 and eight, they had 90 companies doing apprenticeship. They created, uh, uh, a organization called apprenticeship Carolina branded very carefully to give it a kind of local feel. And they went from 70 companies, excuse me, 90 companies to over 700 and how they were able to sell. It was quite interesting. Tell us how'd they sell it? Well, they hired people who knew nothing about apprenticeship, but we knew a lot about business and they knew a lot about sales.  
Speaker 1    00:23:39    And then they did a, a kind of bootcamp on apprenticeship. What is, they had a really interesting federal representative down there that taught them and help them through the process. And, you know, they would, they, they also had a thousand dollars tax credit, uh, which didn't do too much other than open company's eyes. What is this? What's it about? Um, they were very professional. They became consultants, human resource consultants. They would ask, what kind of training are you doing now? Uh, you want to make it into better, uh, training something more rigorous. Um, they would give them ideas and help them through it. They would do all the paperwork and, um, they succeeded. And once you get a company doing something, it takes on a whole different, uh, all different aspect than sort of working with schools. We've found that out this year, we were thinking, well, we'll get some schools interested and get their employer contacts and we'll get some employers interested and we'll get their school context. The school part didn't work out at all. But when we, when we went and really stimulated employer interest, we were able to generate, uh, hundreds of these youth apprenticeships.  
Speaker 0    00:25:16    So let's step back now. And that's fantastic background, obviously, there's a question of how the lives of those 850,000 apprentices in, um, in the UK turned out or the people in South Carolina. And, you know, I'm sure it's people try to measure that. And there's a big story. Some of it's probably good. Some, it may be not so good, but, but let's, let's put this into a bigger context now in the United States in the last 30, 40 years of economic change. So here's how I look at it and I'll let you react to it. So since the 1950s, uh, manufacturing employment as a fraction of the total has fallen steadily manufacturing employment was a place for a long time, maybe half a century where a little bit less than half a century, but w S important part of the 20th century where people with limited skills, but lots of grit or effort or devotion or inspiration could make a decent living, raise a family, get a house.  
Speaker 0    00:26:22    Um, and that was, uh, an important option for people who couldn't go to college. Didn't want to go to college, which at the time was a small group. Anyway, and as that proportion fell due to a combination of trade and, um, innovation in, in productivity as fewer and fewer job opportunities existed in manufacturing, people who didn't have either the cognitive skills or the opportunities because they were, they had a lousy public school, or they have, they had limited access to, to, to borrowing. They were stuck in jobs that were not as productive or as compelling as had been those manufacturing jobs in the past. And it seems to me that said, we had two choices as a country for how to cope with this transition. Uh, one was to change the nature of what we called school, uh, to change the nature. I mean, our schooling system is in America is overwhelmingly in my view, perhaps unfairly, but overwhelmingly had adapted toward excelling at entrance exams into to get you into the next schooling level, which was college.  
Speaker 0    00:27:36    Um, the amount that was learned at, you know, the K through 12 level was, is relatively small to what it could be. And it was very what we might call. I don't know, book learning and, and human experience is much broader than that. We, we didn't allow for a bunch of trial and error in that essentially every school in America is a version of college prep, ignore ignoring the reality that most kids aren't going in cyber schools are not going to go to college. Can't go to college, don't want to go to college. Won't do well in college. Don't want the jobs that would come from going to college. And so it seems to be, we had, we had a set of choices on how to cope with this transition. We made all the wrong ones. We made college cheaper, uh, as a way to make it easier to attend.  
Speaker 0    00:28:27    Uh, we continue to preach that this college premium that the college graduates made more than high school graduates, uh, was, was, uh, was, this was a golden ring. You could grab if you got onto the right carousel, the right merry-go-round. And I think we sold, uh, a couple of generations of, of, of the students, of America, of a dishonest, true a lie. And as a result, uh, what we should have been doing instead was changing, do it using trial and error to do a whole bunch of things. One of which would be to change the nature of schools. The second would be to offer things like vocational training. The third would be to offer the kind of apprenticeship programs that would be an alternative to high school. It's important to me that that would be we part of that. And we've done virtually none of that.  
Speaker 0    00:29:15    Uh, you know, the, the, we've had a bunch of episodes recently on a charter school system, charter schools, I think an improved college prep program for a very small group of students. It's hard to scale it. Uh, does it solve the problem of, of, uh, what to do once you get to college and, uh, what you're going to do after college? It's a big improvement. I think it's a huge improvement, but it's relatively small and it's impact so far. And its impact might be limited by the, even if it had been more widely available and becomes more widely available. It seems to me, we need a much more diverse set of options as we deal with this transition from agriculture to manufacturing to the so-called knowledge economy. And we've really just done that very poorly.  
Speaker 1    00:30:04    Well, I agree, a hundred percent, I would make a few amendments. One is that, uh, the manufacturing component was mainly for men. True. And, um, that's perhaps one of the reasons why we've seen, um, men's earnings be flatters and women's, uh, women have been more in occupations that have been growing, especially for example, healthcare, uh, where employment has been expanding rapidly. Um, a second point I would make is that, uh, in countries like Switzerland and Germany, where apprenticeship, uh, helps with high level manufacturing, you have a much higher share of the workforce in manufacturing. And if you multiply that almost by two, because, uh, again, men are the main, uh, uh, workers in manufacturing, you get a nontrivial share. Uh, so, uh, we have oriented, uh, I agree completely with your characterization of the education side. Um, and, uh, I think that there is a misunderstanding though, of, of what skill means.  
Speaker 1    00:31:29    I think part of the problem is that, uh, people who define those policies who define education, uh, miss many elements of skill. I mean, Jim, Hackman's written a lot about this, uh, in terms of the role of noncognitive skills, but even in manufacturing, I, um, uh, worked in a company that my dad started this steel service center. And, um, one of the machines was, uh, to operate a sledding machine, which takes a wide coil of steel and puts it through a cylinder knives and cuts it into several narrow, uh, uh, coils of steel, which then is shipped to companies who make parts stamp out parts from those, uh, from those narrower coils. And, um, I recall vividly that, uh, the quality of the slitter operators varied quite a bit. Yeah. Um, and one slitter operator, George Paige was so talented that when a company had a hard job, they said, have George Page do it.  
Speaker 1    00:32:57    Yeah. And George Page had a considerable amount of skill, but we in the academic community would say, well, this is a semi-skilled job, or even an unskilled skilled. Yeah. Uh, but, but they, they miss the reality of what skill is, or, and especially if you take some of the trades, um, they're confronting different problems almost every day, and they need to have a lot of skill and adaptability and kind of understanding a lot of which comes only from experience. So, um, I think that it was a key element of how this, what I call the academic only approach, uh, emerged. And even I was at a conference where, um, a graduate student, Harvard graduate student was explaining, uh, what was going on, uh, any, any put up a graph. And the graph was educational attainment the trend in educational attainment. And he said, well, here's the trend of skill in the United States? And, you know, I'm asking myself, how did that become an identity? It's wrong. That anyone thinking a few minutes about it would know that at that baseball player might not have the academic skills, but he certainly has a lot of marketable skills.  
Speaker 0    00:34:33    Yeah. Well, it reminds me of a whole set of problems that I've been thinking about lately. And I'm thinking, trying to write a book about, which is the challenge of remembering, there were things other than what can be measured, which is really hard. I think for people and economists had this, it goes back to, you know, my PhD advisor, Gary Becker, his book, human capital, and his work on human Capitol in the mid 1960s. It was a really brilliant and clever idea to try to measure human capital, the knowledge and ability that people bring to the job that translates into earnings. And it was a great idea. Uh, and yet it inevitably got, got measured, human capital got measured as years of schooling. Uh, the time your rear end sat in a seat rather than what you absorbed in, uh, the classroom experience to start with, uh, and of course their aspects of human capital go way beyond what you learn in the classroom.  
Speaker 0    00:35:41    As you're pointing out, there's no house there's, um, art, there's craftsmanship, there's all kinds of, uh, really important things for George Paige and others who, who were actually working on the job and the people in those, the managers of those people and the coworkers, they know who those people are. They can tell you who's more skilled than others, but you know, if, if, if their measure of what you bring to the workforce is how many years of schooling you have to say, that's a blunt measure is, is, you know, is, is a joke. Uh, and of course it then gets the subtler version of as well. Yeah. It's not just years of schooling. It's what you studied. But of course, it's also what you learned, whether you were paying attention to you, but if you got good grades, I mean, there's so many aspects to it. And I think our profession bears some of the blame for the, um, the overemphasis on extremely blunt measures of ability and skill.  
Speaker 1    00:36:40    Right. I I've, yeah. I've written about that. And test scores yeah. Is the other indicator. But, um, the two areas that, again are obvious, once you say it are occupational skills. And as I mentioned, these employability skills, uh, which can be ingenuity and sort of, uh, coming up with, you know, bottom up innovation, um, and those skills are valued. Uh, but they are, as you say, hard to measure even by companies. But what happens with apprenticeship is that you can watch how people are learning. So you, you might start with five apprentices, uh, and the mentors are seeing how they're learning. Some of them are taking to it, you know, one may drop out, uh, he's not as interested, but again, as you say, when you start young, it's not that big a loss. The person at least has gotten some familiarity with workplaces, gotten a little pay.  
Speaker 1    00:37:52    Um, and the employer begins to see which of these four remaining ones are the ones they really want to keep. And a second thing is that the apprentices, the specific skill is taking place as well in the workplace because you're learning that occupation in the context of a particular company. Yeah. So you're learning the company culture, you're learning where things are. You'd have to learn that even if you hired somebody off the street for that job. So, um, that's why apprenticeship can work well with companies. Once they learn how to do it, once they kind of get used to the idea, uh, the saving in recruitment and retention, uh, can be significant. Uh, but as you say, most companies don't really know it. Most Americans don't really know.  
Speaker 0    00:38:53    So what, what we have in America though, which is kind of similar is we have an internship, which is kind of an unpaid apprenticeship. And of course, uh, there's been some, uh, criticism of internships. So one of the great, you know, unintended consequences of, um, either well-meaning or poorly designed, um, public policy, you know, people said, well, internships are unfair because only rich people can afford only children of the wealthy can afford to work at a job and not be paid. So we should require internships to be paid. That makes them a little bit more like apprenticeships doesn't have the close tie of the educational component to the practical component, but it's a start. And I think it's a wonderful thing. Um, you know, all the, almost all the internships that my kids were able to do or informative for them educational, they learned as we've been talking about not just the details of that job, but how to work well with others, how to present yourself, how to deal with things that aren't fun, like getting up every morning, thinking I'm not getting to work.  
Speaker 0    00:40:05    And yet people say, well, it's unfair. So we need to have, they have to be paid. Which of course means now to get an internship, you have to have enough skill to make it worthwhile. Which of course, privileges people grew up in wealthy households. If it's even me, it's much worse a is I think that was a terrible mistake. I think that's our natural federal problem now, not just a state problem, but anyway, an internship is, is a half kind of a apprenticeship of sorts. Uh, and I think they're fantastic. I wish there were more of them and the companies that use them. Of course, as you say, use them to look for good employees and to, it's fun to, by the way, it's fun for the managers and mentors in either apprenticeships or internships to, to guide and inspire a young person who's was which they were once.  
Speaker 1    00:40:53    Absolutely. Yeah. I think, uh, both, both are good. Um, and even, you know, I've heard some people are cut out for act what I call the academic only approach. I mean, some of some people will just thrive in a college university atmosphere. Um, I have a phrase which I use, uh, which says, um,  
Speaker 1    00:41:20    That sameness is not equality. Explain sameness is not equality. There's a notion that because college is good for some that it should be same for everybody. Yeah. And if you don't have the same opportunities and exactly the same approach, you're going to go into an unequal situation. Well, it's not, it's not going to lead to equality. Correct. If you force people into that one box, yeah. Then you're going to have more money, more inequality, because you're not having this diversity of approaches for, for learning Isaiah apprenticeship as a, essentially about learning. Moreover, I think that when kids learn how to learn through apprenticeship, they have a much better chance of succeeding in academic pursuits. And some of them will have an interest, you know, at age 30 to take more college courses, the availability of learning is so widespread today, uh, that there's a great deal dealing with motivation. And if you're really motivated to learn world history, you know, you can do.  
Speaker 0    00:42:47    Yeah. I'm reminded of when my, um, my oldest son, I was probably about four or five years old. Might've been six, was admiring a, a backhoe, a Digger, uh, which always fascinated him, uh, anything he had, what, what, what economist, uh, John Bodden, I heard him describe as iron IDAs, a fascination with anything made out of metal, uh, that afflicts, uh, many, uh, young children. Uh, and my son had that and he would sit for it. Could, he would set it as long as you want it. And, and, and just watch. And I remember one time, one of the drivers of the backhoe, let my son sit in the, in the seat and, and his stare it and pretend he was staring at, it was probably one of the highlights of his life at that point. And, uh, and, but there was the other one who, who literally got in his face at five years old and said, he said, does this look like fun to you? And, um, and my son said, yeah. And he said, let me give you some advice. He said, stay in school. It's really nice to work in an office with air conditioning. So, you know, you can get information from different places and you can get excited about different things and what you, what appeals to when you're younger can be different for when you're older. But we certainly, um, I think have failed to give people, um, the flavor of, um, of what's available out there. Just,  
Speaker 1    00:44:22    You know, uh, an old friend of mine, John Bishop used to point out that one of the big inputs to is student time, it's engagement. Yeah. And I think that's where, um, we've made a huge mistake in not recognizing that engagement can take place in a variety of forms. Again, there may be some people that are totally engaged by, uh, an academic professor or teacher, uh, and of the material, whereas others may be engaged with other kinds of things. And I think that's one of the great things about apprenticeship that you, you see this variety of occupations. Again, this is in a robust system where there are a lot of apprenticeship offers. And today we have this kind of chicken egg problem, because there aren't enough offers. Counselors are not that much learning about how to refer kids to apprenticeships. Um, and then you don't have the demand on the student part or the supply of students that really want to go into it. So we need to build up both sides, the D the demand for students and the supply of students, I believe. And I've seen it that where you have high quality apprenticeships, you don't really have a problem attracting students. In fact, usually there's a waiting list.  
Speaker 0    00:46:09    Well, so let's talk about some of the drawbacks to the idea. And there, um, I, I, I bring these up because I think they are drawbacks, but I think it's important to remember, to always ask the question, what's the alternative. Um, and in light of what I mentioned before is the landscape of opportunity for the people who don't have a college opportunity. W we'll talk a little bit more about that. I hope, uh, before we finish, but one of the drawbacks of course, is that time spent on the job as a teenager is time spent not in school. And so some people have suggested that an apprenticeship program is a, it's a costly investment because it, it you're foregoing the more general education you're putting your eggs in this one basket, when you're a teenager, and you're going to struggle to find a opportunity if that particular industry or that particular skill becomes less valued. How do you respond to that  
Speaker 1    00:47:12    Two ways? First of all, um, again, apprentices are taking some courses. I think they're going to get a lot more out of those courses because they see the relevance of what they're learning in the academic setting, uh, to the, uh, occupation. Um, and second that if you look at studies of what people are doing, let's say 30, 40 years after they were in apprenticeships, and you ask them, how much do you use of the skills that you've learned in apprenticeship? The answer is very high for the vast majority of individuals. So even though they may change occupations, usually they are in a similar cluster of occupation or skillset. And so the skill sets are still still relevant, usually things, um, tactical change occurs incrementally. And your knowledge of the basics of that occupation is very helpful. Friend of mine once did a study of, uh, people, uh, who designed circuit boards and salespeople would go to companies and say, you don't really need people with skill designing.  
Speaker 1    00:48:37    You can just need an operator who can punch things out and so on. And they hired some of these, uh, some of this equipment and operators. They let go. Some of their designers, six months later, they hired them all back because they needed people who could work, where the machine was complimentary to what they were doing and not a substitute. So, um, finally, you know, I once asked, there's a company in Pennsylvania that has a very, has a long experience with apprenticeship. And I asked, well, what are they taking as their related academic instruction? And he said, well, they're taking college physics, a college writing at a community college. And, uh, you find that again, it depends on the apprenticeship. Uh, we now have in many countries like apprenticeships in accounting. I talked to an individual from Germany who told me, who is now a partner in a big accounting firm.  
Speaker 1    00:49:47    And he went to a gymnasium. He could have gone into college directly for free in Germany. And instead he took an attack's apprenticeship. And he said, that was the best thing I ever did because I learned how to work with clients. Uh, when I went back to college, I breezed through and I was very much in demand because I had both sets of skills. So, um, apprenticeship is a mode of learning and increasingly, uh, it's being applied in, uh, white collar professions. I T particularly, uh, programming, uh, development of, uh, uh, projects of that sort. So, um, again, uh, let's widen the range of things that can be done, uh, use both academic and work based learning, but it,  
Speaker 0    00:50:46    Yeah, it seems to me that that criticism, that, um, you're handicapping apprentices, because they're not getting the, or general education romanticizes, the quality of general education for the people we're talking about here, who would like to be apprentices. Uh, you know, it's tragic how, I think, how little students learn, um, in the classroom. Uh, they obviously learned a bunch of intangible things in the classroom, by the way that we have not talked about, we need to be fair about a high school. And college is not just about acquiring so-called human capital or, or actual skills or some there's some thinking and all kinds of other things that that would, might be hard to quantify besides, right. Obviously, but, but I think for the population of, of particularly low income, urban students who the charter school movements trying to help, uh, and that are increasingly struggling, I think, to, to get ahead, um, we, we failed them and, and, uh, the idea that they're not going to get this general education is only true.  
Speaker 0    00:51:58    If you think that the credential itself is what, uh, is what sustains, uh, economic opportunity. And there is some, there is some truth to that, unfortunately, right? Obviously if you do not finish high school, if you don't, uh, get a college degree, you are handicapped in a different set of ways. Other than just, you didn't learn what you could have learned. You are going to have trouble sometimes getting a door open, but it strikes me that, that, that whole process, the whole emphasis on credentials, uh, as a gatekeeper is a mistake, uh, writ large in that sense that I think there would be a better place if, if people were, uh, more open to what other ways that people could become valuable. And, and this, the apprenticeship idea or vocational training, or these other options, we've been talking about all ways to broaden all kinds of aspects as by the way, not just how easy or hard it is to find a job, but your self esteem. You're right. If you live in a world where college is the measure of who's successful, it's when that isn't particularly true, but it's thought to be true. It's such a terrible, it's a terrible system. It seems like a mistake.  
Speaker 1    00:53:11    Yeah. I want to add something about pride. Yeah. Um, let's say you go to college, maybe a community college, even you graduate, but you know, you got a C plus average, um, you know, the person next to you got a, B plus average, the person next to him got an AA average. Um, you know, that yeah, you got through, you can feel, Oh, you graduated even a four year college. Um, and you can take some pride in that, but you know, that you're way below what some of your classmates have achieved. Uh, what apprenticeship does, is it widens the range of people who can be in the top 10%? Yeah. If you judge people only on the academic side, you know, only 10% are going to be in the top 10% kind of works that way. But if you judge people on how well they are doing, uh, as hospital technicians or how well they're doing, uh, in customer service or how well they're doing in welding, you know, then, you know, a lot more than 10% can be in the top 10%.  
Speaker 1    00:54:33    And that one day I was giving a talk, uh, in Washington at the home of the German ambassador. And there were a number of German managers of us intermediate, uh, of U S uh, subsidiaries. And when I got to the statement about how apprenticeship brings a sense of pride, Britain's a sense of being part of a, of a community of practice. They all started shaking there yet. Yeah. That was something that they all felt most of these managers had been through an apprenticeship, and when they completed their apprenticeship, they were very proud of what they had accomplished. And I think it gives people a sense that, of accomplishment that, you know, a C average, even in graduate won't get.  
Speaker 0    00:55:29    Yeah. And it's, it's, uh, the other aspect of William really talked about, which, which I think is certainly important to human dignity and flourishing and, and, and pride is the concept of mastery. Uh, and I think a lot of, uh, if you meet a master, a person who has mastered something, I recently replaced the sliding doors at the back of my house. And, um, we finished the project and, and then we realized, Oh, wait, we've got to stay in them. And I thought we're paying them and to protect the wood. And I thought, Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. And the cost. And, and I called the installer and asked them who they recommended to, to put the stain on thinking, you know, it's pretty unskilled jobs staying it's unskilled, but I can't do it. Yeah. Other than that, I do it badly, but, okay.  
Speaker 0    00:56:28    So I asked him and they recommended someone and they recommended a couple people and I called both and, and what was dramatically more expensive than the other. And the total was a shocking number and of how much it was going to cost. And I thought, Oh, this is awful. Obviously it's, I don't need to pay this amount. And I, I called my brother in law and he said, that was about what he expected. My brother-in-law's wiser than I have in these areas. He said, Hey, that's my, we didn't expect it. I said, why is it so expensive? He said, well, it takes, it takes about a day to do a day. I'm thinking this almost no wood in the door. It's almost all glass. How long could it actually take? And he said, well, you know, you've got to put four or five coats down, think four or five coats.  
Speaker 0    00:57:07    Why would you want it and explain why you'd want to do that. And eventually I realized that one, it was a reasonable price and two, it was worth paying. So I, the guy comes to my house. And, um, first of all, he was just the most pleasant person. He was in his, uh, in his seventies. And he was really good at what he did. And he knew it, but he didn't, it wasn't annoying or arrogant about it. Uh, it just went about his business. He had a little, um, I want to say he had a transistor radio Alfred to put music on for a while. He was painting, staining my doors and I, and these, I don't know, I've got my music and, and he had a little set of earplugs and he is in his world doing his job for hours. You know, there was some drying time and he had to come back and put extra coats on.  
Speaker 0    00:57:55    And then he and I have two doors. So he did both, both doors. And, um, I, I can't tell you how much pleasure I got from paying to see a craftsman, a person who was exceedingly skilled and diligent about what he does. And, you know, even to the point, I just have to mention this cause it was so beautiful. He said, you know, he said, don't. I said, you know, I was asking him, I think it was a question of, um, there, there were a couple of nails and I, and it was a question of how, when you put the stain on and he said, if you, if you put it on too soon, he explained to me that, you know, your thumb print will, when you touch it, the oil from your fingers will, will color that. And it'll be stained and discolored. You'll never be able to fix it thinking, Oh, come on.  
Speaker 0    00:58:43    But then it turned out. I think it's true. So there's all this nuance and small things, but, but his devotion to his craft was inspiring. And I think he took great pride in it. I know he took great pride in it. Um, and, um, I think that opportunity for dignified work, uh, you know, compared to what I do, which is, um, I mean, I'm proud of it. I like what I do. I think I'm pretty good at it, but it's not the only way to serve your fellow human beings is not the only way to get, have a meaningful life. And we've turned this race to, you know, test scores and grades and college prep into the, uh, competition. As you say, only a few people by definition can Excel at. And, uh, it's such a small corner of the human experience.  
Speaker 1    00:59:35    We need a diversity of people in there in their capabilities. I'll tell you a story about a friend, a German friend of mine. And he sort of a bit of my mentor. And he told me that, uh, when somebody becomes a doctor in a small town in Germany, people don't really pay much attention, but if somebody becomes a Meister, which is that next step, you first become a journeymen where you've completed your apprenticeship, but then it's like the PhD of that occupation, craftsmanship, you become a Meister, your pictures in the paper, everybody in the village knows about it. And that level of respect is, is just prominent. So absolutely it's a, it's something to admire. Yeah. It's something we've lost. Maybe I admired, especially because I'm not very good with my hands, right?  
Speaker 0    01:00:40    Yeah, no, I, that, that was partly by, you know, as you can tell from my story, that's partly my reaction, uh, is the, um, T to say it's useful is to understate it dramatically, uh, when, uh, when a good plumber comes into your house and understands what needs to be done and does it well it's, um, accelerating might be a little strong, but maybe not.  
Speaker 1    01:01:07    Yeah, well, you know, uh, I visited a, uh, a program in Baltimore that had a training facility and, um, the training facility was for the apprentices, but as it was also for plumbers to come back to upgrade further. So for example, uh, what you need for pipe fitting in a hospital is far more elaborate than what you might need in a normal home, or even a, even an office building. So there are a lot of these things that if you're not into occupations, you miss, and if you're only into, you know, degrees even act, even graduate degrees, you, you, you certainly miss a lot,  
Speaker 0    01:02:02    I guess that it has been Robert Lurman Robert. Thanks for being part of econ. Talk. Thank you.  
Speaker 5    01:02:14    This is econ talk part of the library of economics and Liberty for Marine contact. Go to econ talk org, where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings related to today's conversation. The sound engineer for econ talk is rich Goyette. I'm your host Russ Roberts. Thanks for listening to talk to you on Monday. 

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Russ Roberts,00:00:03,"Today is June 1st, 2020. And I want to mention that we are recording this in the middle of the pandemic. I asked listeners to be patient. If our audio quality is not up to our usual standards, we're using different equipment and the wifi and the Roberts household is a bit stressed, stretched, and stressed. I also want to mention that every econ talk episode is now up at YouTube. These are typically audio files, but we've started recording video as well. For those who might want to see my pandemic beard, et cetera, just search econ, talk at YouTube and please subscribe. And now for today's guest economist, Robert Lurman of the urban Institute and American university, he's written widely on topics and labor economics. Our topic for today is the young people in America are struggling to find meaningful and productive work and the potential for apprenticeships to make a difference in their lives. Robert, welcome to econ talk. Thank you. Now let's start with the nature of the problem. you know, what's the question that apprenticeships might be answering?"
Robert Lerma,00:01:06,"Well, apprenticeships answer two questions. One is how to widen the routes to rewarding careers for young people, and also how to improve the match between skills and jobs and careers for companies, making them more productive."
Russ Roberts,00:01:28,"And you've been writing about this for a long time. Yes. I found something from 1990. It probably is the first thing you wrote. So that's 30 years ago. how long you've been interested in, in apprenticeships?"
Robert Lerma,00:01:43,"Well, about 34 years ago, I started being very interested in youth. youth unemployment was my dissertation topic way back in 1970. And, I worked at the department of labor. I worked in academic institutions on that question, and really got frustrated with the, types of programs that, the labor department was pushing. I thought that, they might be okay for the very bottom group, but, they were missing a large segment of the youth population. I then learned about the European systems, especially yeah, Germany and Switzerland, and began to think we ought to take a look at them."
Russ Roberts,00:02:42,"I think most of us don't really have an idea of what an apprenticeship is, except maybe something we read about from the middle ages and a Guild. how do they let's start with how they work in Europe, and, and what population they serve?"
Robert Lerma,00:02:56,"Well, first of all, Europe, is varied. you have Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, all with excellent programs, that start at relatively young ages could be 15, 16, and they combine, coursework with on the job learning. but the on job learning, has what we might call a dual production. It's the production of skills along with the production at the workplace. So they're helping, contribute to out. But, at the same time, the apprenticeships in the U S have traditionally been in the trades, especially the building trades construction. and they start at a much older age, typically a U S apprenticeship start at the age of 26, 27, 28. whereas in, those European countries where apprenticeship is robust, they start in late high school. And when the workers are in this program, so are they getting paid?"
Robert Lerma,00:04:22,"Yes, apprenticeships are paid. they involve mentoring by somebody at the workplace, but they also undertake jobs at varying levels of skills. So the apprentices would start out on first day doing some work. It's going to be low skill work, it's beginning. but over time, their skill levels increase. their pay levels increase a bit, but, there's a kind of turning point where, the pay levels are less than the productivity and that's where the companies are able to recoup some of their investment. And, and what's the, give us an idea of what the pay might be and how long that apprenticeship lasts in a European setting? Yeah. well, the apprenticeships in Europe last, two to four years, sometimes five, depends on the occupation. The wages, are often somewhere around 50% of what a skilled worker would make, but in Switzerland when they start young, it's 20%. So think of a skilled worker, maybe getting 20, $22 an hour and the apprentices getting $4 an hour. but that's more than they would get sitting in a classroom and they're getting, a lot of investment by the company and their skill. And"
Russ Roberts,00:05:59,"What do we have any, do we have any, well, let me ask a better question and European settings, what's the role of the government?"
Robert Lerma,00:06:08,"Well, the government plays a big role in the off job learning. So because these apprenticeships start in late high school and high school here, is it entitlement as it is their, the schooling component of an apprenticeship is paid for by the government. The government also has kind of an oversight role, but usually, a lot of the governance is taking place with industry associations, sometimes labor groups, especially in Germany, and the government has, you know, underlying legislation. so it's, the funding is mainly the government funding is mainly for the off job learning. the companies pay the wages, the companies pay for the mentors. and, that's, that's the government role. And can anybody, any company start one be a part of it? well, yes. Although in Germany, things are more regulated than in other places, in Germany and a lot of professions you can't get into them unless you've gone through an apprenticeship. but yeah, any, any company there's, you know, maybe 30, 40% of companies have apprenticeships"
Russ Roberts,00:07:40,"And the numbers vary greatly in, in your foot. They're all greater than the numbers in the United States. And if I remember correctly, it's, they're about 10 times more prevalent in Europe than they are in the United States is that"
Robert Lerma,00:07:57,"Let's make sure we talk about Europe as a mix, but yeah, in the robust countries, even England, they are about 10 times what we have,"
Russ Roberts,00:08:11,But they're still small. It's only about two to 4%. Is that an accurate number?
Robert Lerma,00:08:15,"Well, it's two to 4% of the workforce, but remember, it's a big chunk of a cohort. Yeah. So in Switzerland, about 70% of the cohort goes through an apprenticeship. You may call it when you say you may know, but more like 50,"
Russ Roberts,00:08:36,"Is that because they started a long time ago? I mean, they've started only recently."
Robert Lerma,00:08:41,"no, no. it's just the way the mathematics work out, you know, I mean, it's not a met count of how many have been in an end, an apprenticeship, how many are in it? Right. It's, it's the stock currently in apprenticeships"
Russ Roberts,00:08:58,And the number of the United States is less than 1% of fraction of one.
Robert Lerma,00:09:01,Yeah. That's less than a half per cent. Yeah.
Russ Roberts,00:09:06,"What's the reason. So for me, when you, when I hear about it, you know, for me, it seems to be, It fascinates me that there's been a, It's come to be received wisdom in the United States that quote, everyone should go to college. That this strikes me as a really bad idea for many, many reasons. One of which is college isn't for everyone, not everyone is good at what we call college or the skills that to typically acquires in college, as we have pushed more and more people to college through both subsidies in the, in the lending market and in the actual provision of, of, you know, state schooling and so on, we've encouraged people to study things that are not particularly productive. That's not the only reason to go to college, of course, but it is encouraged because the proportion of the population is so much larger. So many of the people who go don't finish, and if you don't finish, the financial gains are quite small. it seems to me that that was a, a bad, path. Do you agree?"
Robert Lerma,00:10:19,"I absolutely agree. the one thing that people pushing apprenticeship today, point out is that the academic component of apprenticeships often are at the level of some, at least community college core level courses. So the apprentices are taking some academic component. if you look the best apprenticeship program in the United States at scale is, the Newport news shipyard, which takes about 150 to 200 apprentices a year. They are working on the very first day, but it's a four year program with plenty of courses and, they have 4,000 applications. So, you can combine some positive elements of academic learning through a kind of college experience with a high quality apprenticeship. Um,"
Russ Roberts,00:11:35,"How old are those students at that, in that particular premises?"
Robert Lerma,00:11:38,"No, students come out mostly out of high school. They finished high school and, yeah, it's quite, quite amazing that they have sports teams and a lot of the accoutrements of, of a college experience there."
Russ Roberts,00:11:55,"So what's the, what's the difference? Let let's back up actually. And let's talk a little bit about the, the, post high school educational landscape. So we've got so-called four year BA bachelor's degrees degree programs that are the major state universities. Many of the private universities, we have two year associate degree programs. We have community colleges, which, I'm not sure what distinguishes them from the public schools that, at the state level they're, they're cheaper. and they're, they typically don't offer the accoutrements of college life. They're typically for commuters and people living at home. there's probably a few I've left out, but one of the things that I didn't mention is vocational training and why isn't vocational training a better way to get there from here. Why isn't vocational training for people who don't want to go to college? aren't good at college don't want to study STEM, can't study STEM that is science, tech, math engineering, what's wrong with, you know, vocational training as an apprenticeship alternative. And why isn't that? Why aren't they, why is it vocational training often more widely teaching people how to be plumbers, electricians, and so on?"
Robert Lerma,00:13:23,"Yeah, well, we do have, vocational training. the high schools have reduced their amounts, but there's still some we have, actually there's a federal act called the Perkins act that provides a billion and a half bucks for, both secondary and postsecondary, vocational training, the community colleges, a number of them do have, courses that relate to particular occupations. The problem is that, they're untethered from the labor market, and there, and then in two ways, one is, the mix of occupations and the kind of occupational learning. And the other is that many things you really can't learn just at a classroom. you do need a lot of hands on learning for many occupations, including many of the highest level occupations. You look at doctors and even lawyers. I have a friend that told me that they were hiring these highly paid lawyers out of Ivy league law schools. And they couldn't do anything for a year. No, that's the problem."
Russ Roberts,00:14:52,Yeah. And so the role of work
Robert Lerma,00:14:56,"Based learning is critical in my view to, to succeeding, but in, in, in many of the apprenticeships, they do need to take, a good, let's say math course or good. And, and the, the positive thing is that it's a much greater level of engagement when they take that course. There's a much greater notion of relevance because they're using it."
Russ Roberts,00:15:28,Yeah. They might also focus on the skills within the math class that would be most useful rather than the most interesting.
Robert Lerma,00:15:35,"And, there are a number of what we might call employability skills, which, employers complain incessantly that workers don't have. but in an apprenticeship, you gradually build those up, with a mentor"
Russ Roberts,00:15:54,"You're talking about promptness, politeness, problem solving teamwork. Yeah."
Robert Lerma,00:16:01,"Knowing exactly how to work with a supervisor, maybe six skin."
Russ Roberts,00:16:08,"Yeah. Yeah. Acquiring thicker skin would seem to be an important attribute of, so I mean, it's an attractive idea, that has gotten not much traction here in the United States. one could argue that there were some special interests, obviously professors benefit from having and others administrators benefit from having college, be the default choice for what comes after high school."
Robert Lerma,00:16:36,"we would,"
Russ Roberts,00:16:39,"You could argue that, that our Guild, the economist skills likes the current situation. but what do you think is stopping the apprenticeship idea from getting more traction here in the United States? Is this sounds good on paper? I have some criticisms of it that I'll raise it a minute, but on paper, it sounds great. Well, what's wrong? Why isn't it happening?"
Robert Lerma,00:17:03,"Well, I think we have to go back to what happened, in the late eighties, early nineties, because that's, you know, one of a, kind of a natural experiment. there was a lot of interest, and my 1990 article and some others were, helping generate that interest, to the point where, president George H w Bush proposed the national youth apprenticeship act of 1992. And this was an idea to use the term youth apprenticeship because in America, most were in construction and started much later. and there was a lot of enthusiasm at the time. bill Clinton had a little program in Arkansas on youth apprenticeship. And when he came in, there was a lot of interest, but what happened was the legislation, pretty much knocked out, use the apprenticeship. It was called the school to work, opportunities act."
Robert Lerma,00:18:18,"It had had all kinds of very thin types of vocational work oriented, learning, like, job shadowing and things of that sort. and one reason was that people said, well, you know, vocation ledge, it's going to be too much like vocational education, which was tracking, taking kids that could have done very well in college, pushing them off into some vocation. And that basically, was one of the two elements that caused this enthusiasm for youth apprenticeship to degenerate into, something was called work based learning. And, I, I mean, school, the work, oriented program, the other element was that the construction unions had what they thought was their ownership of apprenticeship with an office of apprenticeship and, them being on many state boards and national boards. And they didn't really want competition even though it was going to be in other fields. Sure. So the result was apprenticeship was barely mentioned in that legislation. but in the last few years, we have had some renewed interest, late in the Obama administration. And now in the Trump administration, there's been some funding. and, we're working on it now to try to regenerate interest. I think the reason for the regeneration of interest is what you were referring to earlier. This college, for all things doesn't work and people are beginning to realize it's a costly failure. Is there,"
Russ Roberts,00:20:20,"Is there a potential for this, you know, potential rebirth to start at an earlier age, other than post-college. And one of the attractions to me of the teenage model is that it gives people a flavor of what that life would be like at a time when it's relatively inexpensive to find out what that life would be like, whatever it is."
Robert Lerma,00:20:41,"Yeah, absolutely. well, the Congress now has authorized more money for apprenticeship. The amount that, the federal government helped with over the years was trivial. and the number of people in the office of apprenticeship went from about 300 to 130. The amount of money spent was like 20 to $25 million, which, you know, there was one person in Indiana, two people in Iowa, Ohio run entire state. so now there has been some funding and their funding intermediaries, including the urban Institute, to help stimulate, youth apprenticeship and other kinds of apprenticeships. And, we're learning a lot. the key, the key is helping employers understand how to do apprenticeship. one of the more interesting things that rekindled my interest was the success of England and the success of South Carolina. And what happened in England was they let their apprenticeship program atrophy."
Robert Lerma,00:22:08,"And then, Tony Blair got things started again. Cameron was a big prime minister. Cameron was a big supporter of apprenticeship and they went from about 150,000 to 850,000 in a period of about eight, nine years. And one of the ways they were able to do it was to provide subsidies to private for often for profit workplace training organizations that cited in their interest to stimulate companies to start apprenticeships. And they did it. And, South Carolina is another interesting example because in 2007 and eight, they had 90 companies doing apprenticeship. They created, a organization called apprenticeship Carolina branded very carefully to give it a kind of local feel. And they went from 70 companies, excuse me, 90 companies to over 700 and how they were able to sell. It was quite interesting. Tell us how'd they sell it? Well, they hired people who knew nothing about apprenticeship, but we knew a lot about business and they knew a lot about sales."
Robert Lerma,00:23:39,"And then they did a, a kind of bootcamp on apprenticeship. What is, they had a really interesting federal representative down there that taught them and help them through the process. And, you know, they would, they, they also had a thousand dollars tax credit, which didn't do too much other than open company's eyes. What is this? What's it about? they were very professional. They became consultants, human resource consultants. They would ask, what kind of training are you doing now? you want to make it into better, training something more rigorous. they would give them ideas and help them through it. They would do all the paperwork and, they succeeded. And once you get a company doing something, it takes on a whole different, all different aspect than sort of working with schools. We've found that out this year, we were thinking, well, we'll get some schools interested and get their employer contacts and we'll get some employers interested and we'll get their school context. The school part didn't work out at all. But when we, when we went and really stimulated employer interest, we were able to generate, hundreds of these youth apprenticeships."
Russ Roberts,00:25:16,"So let's step back now. And that's fantastic background, obviously, there's a question of how the lives of those 850,000 apprentices in, in the UK turned out or the people in South Carolina. And, you know, I'm sure it's people try to measure that. And there's a big story. Some of it's probably good. Some, it may be not so good, but, but let's, let's put this into a bigger context now in the United States in the last 30, 40 years of economic change. So here's how I look at it and I'll let you react to it. So since the 1950s, manufacturing employment as a fraction of the total has fallen steadily manufacturing employment was a place for a long time, maybe half a century where a little bit less than half a century, but w S important part of the 20th century where people with limited skills, but lots of grit or effort or devotion or inspiration could make a decent living, raise a family, get a house."
Russ Roberts,00:26:22,"and that was, an important option for people who couldn't go to college. Didn't want to go to college, which at the time was a small group. Anyway, and as that proportion fell due to a combination of trade and, innovation in, in productivity as fewer and fewer job opportunities existed in manufacturing, people who didn't have either the cognitive skills or the opportunities because they were, they had a lousy public school, or they have, they had limited access to, to, to borrowing. They were stuck in jobs that were not as productive or as compelling as had been those manufacturing jobs in the past. And it seems to me that said, we had two choices as a country for how to cope with this transition. one was to change the nature of what we called school, to change the nature. I mean, our schooling system is in America is overwhelmingly in my view, perhaps unfairly, but overwhelmingly had adapted toward excelling at entrance exams into to get you into the next schooling level, which was college."
Russ Roberts,00:27:36,"the amount that was learned at, you know, the K through 12 level was, is relatively small to what it could be. And it was very what we might call. I don't know, book learning and, and human experience is much broader than that. We, we didn't allow for a bunch of trial and error in that essentially every school in America is a version of college prep, ignore ignoring the reality that most kids aren't going in cyber schools are not going to go to college. Can't go to college, don't want to go to college. Won't do well in college. Don't want the jobs that would come from going to college. And so it seems to be, we had, we had a set of choices on how to cope with this transition. We made all the wrong ones. We made college cheaper, as a way to make it easier to attend."
Russ Roberts,00:28:27,"we continue to preach that this college premium that the college graduates made more than high school graduates, was, was, was, this was a golden ring. You could grab if you got onto the right carousel, the right merry-go-round. And I think we sold, a couple of generations of, of, of the students, of America, of a dishonest, true a lie. And as a result, what we should have been doing instead was changing, do it using trial and error to do a whole bunch of things. One of which would be to change the nature of schools. The second would be to offer things like vocational training. The third would be to offer the kind of apprenticeship programs that would be an alternative to high school. It's important to me that that would be we part of that. And we've done virtually none of that."
Russ Roberts,00:29:15,"you know, the, the, we've had a bunch of episodes recently on a charter school system, charter schools, I think an improved college prep program for a very small group of students. It's hard to scale it. does it solve the problem of, of, what to do once you get to college and, what you're going to do after college? It's a big improvement. I think it's a huge improvement, but it's relatively small and it's impact so far. And its impact might be limited by the, even if it had been more widely available and becomes more widely available. It seems to me, we need a much more diverse set of options as we deal with this transition from agriculture to manufacturing to the so-called knowledge economy. And we've really just done that very poorly."
Robert Lerma,00:30:04,"Well, I agree, a hundred percent, I would make a few amendments. One is that, the manufacturing component was mainly for men. True. And, that's perhaps one of the reasons why we've seen, men's earnings be flatters and women's, women have been more in occupations that have been growing, especially for example, healthcare, where employment has been expanding rapidly. a second point I would make is that, in countries like Switzerland and Germany, where apprenticeship, helps with high level manufacturing, you have a much higher share of the workforce in manufacturing. And if you multiply that almost by two, because, again, men are the main, workers in manufacturing, you get a nontrivial share. so, we have oriented, I agree completely with your characterization of the education side. and, I think that there is a misunderstanding though, of, of what skill means."
Robert Lerma,00:31:29,"I think part of the problem is that, people who define those policies who define education, miss many elements of skill. I mean, Jim, Hackman's written a lot about this, in terms of the role of noncognitive skills, but even in manufacturing, I, worked in a company that my dad started this steel service center. And, one of the machines was, to operate a sledding machine, which takes a wide coil of steel and puts it through a cylinder knives and cuts it into several narrow, coils of steel, which then is shipped to companies who make parts stamp out parts from those, from those narrower coils. And, I recall vividly that, the quality of the slitter operators varied quite a bit. Yeah. and one slitter operator, George Paige was so talented that when a company had a hard job, they said, have George Page do it."
Robert Lerma,00:32:57,"Yeah. And George Page had a considerable amount of skill, but we in the academic community would say, well, this is a semi-skilled job, or even an unskilled skilled. Yeah. but, but they, they miss the reality of what skill is, or, and especially if you take some of the trades, they're confronting different problems almost every day, and they need to have a lot of skill and adaptability and kind of understanding a lot of which comes only from experience. So, I think that it was a key element of how this, what I call the academic only approach, emerged. And even I was at a conference where, a graduate student, Harvard graduate student was explaining, what was going on, any, any put up a graph. And the graph was educational attainment the trend in educational attainment. And he said, well, here's the trend of skill in the United States? And, you know, I'm asking myself, how did that become an identity? It's wrong. That anyone thinking a few minutes about it would know that at that baseball player might not have the academic skills, but he certainly has a lot of marketable skills."
Russ Roberts,00:34:33,"Yeah. Well, it reminds me of a whole set of problems that I've been thinking about lately. And I'm thinking, trying to write a book about, which is the challenge of remembering, there were things other than what can be measured, which is really hard. I think for people and economists had this, it goes back to, you know, my PhD advisor, Gary Becker, his book, human capital, and his work on human Capitol in the mid 1960s. It was a really brilliant and clever idea to try to measure human capital, the knowledge and ability that people bring to the job that translates into earnings. And it was a great idea. and yet it inevitably got, got measured, human capital got measured as years of schooling. the time your rear end sat in a seat rather than what you absorbed in, the classroom experience to start with, and of course their aspects of human capital go way beyond what you learn in the classroom."
Russ Roberts,00:35:41,"As you're pointing out, there's no house there's, art, there's craftsmanship, there's all kinds of, really important things for George Paige and others who, who were actually working on the job and the people in those, the managers of those people and the coworkers, they know who those people are. They can tell you who's more skilled than others, but you know, if, if, if their measure of what you bring to the workforce is how many years of schooling you have to say, that's a blunt measure is, is, you know, is, is a joke. and of course it then gets the subtler version of as well. Yeah. It's not just years of schooling. It's what you studied. But of course, it's also what you learned, whether you were paying attention to you, but if you got good grades, I mean, there's so many aspects to it. And I think our profession bears some of the blame for the, the overemphasis on extremely blunt measures of ability and skill."
Robert Lerma,00:36:40,"Right. I I've, yeah. I've written about that. And test scores yeah. Is the other indicator. But, the two areas that, again are obvious, once you say it are occupational skills. And as I mentioned, these employability skills, which can be ingenuity and sort of, coming up with, you know, bottom up innovation, and those skills are valued. but they are, as you say, hard to measure even by companies. But what happens with apprenticeship is that you can watch how people are learning. So you, you might start with five apprentices, and the mentors are seeing how they're learning. Some of them are taking to it, you know, one may drop out, he's not as interested, but again, as you say, when you start young, it's not that big a loss. The person at least has gotten some familiarity with workplaces, gotten a little pay."
Robert Lerma,00:37:52,"and the employer begins to see which of these four remaining ones are the ones they really want to keep. And a second thing is that the apprentices, the specific skill is taking place as well in the workplace because you're learning that occupation in the context of a particular company. Yeah. So you're learning the company culture, you're learning where things are. You'd have to learn that even if you hired somebody off the street for that job. So, that's why apprenticeship can work well with companies. Once they learn how to do it, once they kind of get used to the idea, the saving in recruitment and retention, can be significant. but as you say, most companies don't really know it. Most Americans don't really know."
Russ Roberts,00:38:53,"So what, what we have in America though, which is kind of similar is we have an internship, which is kind of an unpaid apprenticeship. And of course, there's been some, criticism of internships. So one of the great, you know, unintended consequences of, either well-meaning or poorly designed, public policy, you know, people said, well, internships are unfair because only rich people can afford only children of the wealthy can afford to work at a job and not be paid. So we should require internships to be paid. That makes them a little bit more like apprenticeships doesn't have the close tie of the educational component to the practical component, but it's a start. And I think it's a wonderful thing. you know, all the, almost all the internships that my kids were able to do or informative for them educational, they learned as we've been talking about not just the details of that job, but how to work well with others, how to present yourself, how to deal with things that aren't fun, like getting up every morning, thinking I'm not getting to work."
Russ Roberts,00:40:05,"And yet people say, well, it's unfair. So we need to have, they have to be paid. Which of course means now to get an internship, you have to have enough skill to make it worthwhile. Which of course, privileges people grew up in wealthy households. If it's even me, it's much worse a is I think that was a terrible mistake. I think that's our natural federal problem now, not just a state problem, but anyway, an internship is, is a half kind of a apprenticeship of sorts. and I think they're fantastic. I wish there were more of them and the companies that use them. Of course, as you say, use them to look for good employees and to, it's fun to, by the way, it's fun for the managers and mentors in either apprenticeships or internships to, to guide and inspire a young person who's was which they were once."
Robert Lerma,00:40:53,"Absolutely. Yeah. I think, both, both are good. and even, you know, I've heard some people are cut out for act what I call the academic only approach. I mean, some of some people will just thrive in a college university atmosphere. I have a phrase which I use, which says, um,"
Robert Lerma,00:41:20,"That sameness is not equality. Explain sameness is not equality. There's a notion that because college is good for some that it should be same for everybody. Yeah. And if you don't have the same opportunities and exactly the same approach, you're going to go into an unequal situation. Well, it's not, it's not going to lead to equality. Correct. If you force people into that one box, yeah. Then you're going to have more money, more inequality, because you're not having this diversity of approaches for, for learning Isaiah apprenticeship as a, essentially about learning. Moreover, I think that when kids learn how to learn through apprenticeship, they have a much better chance of succeeding in academic pursuits. And some of them will have an interest, you know, at age 30 to take more college courses, the availability of learning is so widespread today, that there's a great deal dealing with motivation. And if you're really motivated to learn world history, you know, you can do."
Russ Roberts,00:42:47,"Yeah. I'm reminded of when my, my oldest son, I was probably about four or five years old. Might've been six, was admiring a, a backhoe, a Digger, which always fascinated him, anything he had, what, what, what economist, John Bodden, I heard him describe as iron IDAs, a fascination with anything made out of metal, that afflicts, many, young children. and my son had that and he would sit for it. Could, he would set it as long as you want it. And, and, and just watch. And I remember one time, one of the drivers of the backhoe, let my son sit in the, in the seat and, and his stare it and pretend he was staring at, it was probably one of the highlights of his life at that point. And, and, but there was the other one who, who literally got in his face at five years old and said, he said, does this look like fun to you? And, and my son said, yeah. And he said, let me give you some advice. He said, stay in school. It's really nice to work in an office with air conditioning. So, you know, you can get information from different places and you can get excited about different things and what you, what appeals to when you're younger can be different for when you're older. But we certainly, I think have failed to give people, the flavor of, of what's available out there. Just,"
Robert Lerma,00:44:22,"You know, an old friend of mine, John Bishop used to point out that one of the big inputs to is student time, it's engagement. Yeah. And I think that's where, we've made a huge mistake in not recognizing that engagement can take place in a variety of forms. Again, there may be some people that are totally engaged by, an academic professor or teacher, and of the material, whereas others may be engaged with other kinds of things. And I think that's one of the great things about apprenticeship that you, you see this variety of occupations. Again, this is in a robust system where there are a lot of apprenticeship offers. And today we have this kind of chicken egg problem, because there aren't enough offers. Counselors are not that much learning about how to refer kids to apprenticeships. and then you don't have the demand on the student part or the supply of students that really want to go into it. So we need to build up both sides, the D the demand for students and the supply of students, I believe. And I've seen it that where you have high quality apprenticeships, you don't really have a problem attracting students. In fact, usually there's a waiting list."
Russ Roberts,00:46:09,"Well, so let's talk about some of the drawbacks to the idea. And there, I, I, I bring these up because I think they are drawbacks, but I think it's important to remember, to always ask the question, what's the alternative. and in light of what I mentioned before is the landscape of opportunity for the people who don't have a college opportunity. W we'll talk a little bit more about that. I hope, before we finish, but one of the drawbacks of course, is that time spent on the job as a teenager is time spent not in school. And so some people have suggested that an apprenticeship program is a, it's a costly investment because it, it you're foregoing the more general education you're putting your eggs in this one basket, when you're a teenager, and you're going to struggle to find a opportunity if that particular industry or that particular skill becomes less valued. How do you respond to that"
Robert Lerma,00:47:12,"Two ways? First of all, again, apprentices are taking some courses. I think they're going to get a lot more out of those courses because they see the relevance of what they're learning in the academic setting, to the, occupation. and second that if you look at studies of what people are doing, let's say 30, 40 years after they were in apprenticeships, and you ask them, how much do you use of the skills that you've learned in apprenticeship? The answer is very high for the vast majority of individuals. So even though they may change occupations, usually they are in a similar cluster of occupation or skillset. And so the skill sets are still still relevant, usually things, tactical change occurs incrementally. And your knowledge of the basics of that occupation is very helpful. Friend of mine once did a study of, people, who designed circuit boards and salespeople would go to companies and say, you don't really need people with skill designing."
Robert Lerma,00:48:37,"You can just need an operator who can punch things out and so on. And they hired some of these, some of this equipment and operators. They let go. Some of their designers, six months later, they hired them all back because they needed people who could work, where the machine was complimentary to what they were doing and not a substitute. So, finally, you know, I once asked, there's a company in Pennsylvania that has a very, has a long experience with apprenticeship. And I asked, well, what are they taking as their related academic instruction? And he said, well, they're taking college physics, a college writing at a community college. And, you find that again, it depends on the apprenticeship. we now have in many countries like apprenticeships in accounting. I talked to an individual from Germany who told me, who is now a partner in a big accounting firm."
Robert Lerma,00:49:47,"And he went to a gymnasium. He could have gone into college directly for free in Germany. And instead he took an attack's apprenticeship. And he said, that was the best thing I ever did because I learned how to work with clients. when I went back to college, I breezed through and I was very much in demand because I had both sets of skills. So, apprenticeship is a mode of learning and increasingly, it's being applied in, white collar professions. I T particularly, programming, development of, projects of that sort. So, again, let's widen the range of things that can be done, use both academic and work based learning, but it,"
Russ Roberts,00:50:46,"Yeah, it seems to me that that criticism, that, you're handicapping apprentices, because they're not getting the, or general education romanticizes, the quality of general education for the people we're talking about here, who would like to be apprentices. you know, it's tragic how, I think, how little students learn, in the classroom. they obviously learned a bunch of intangible things in the classroom, by the way that we have not talked about, we need to be fair about a high school. And college is not just about acquiring so-called human capital or, or actual skills or some there's some thinking and all kinds of other things that that would, might be hard to quantify besides, right. Obviously, but, but I think for the population of, of particularly low income, urban students who the charter school movements trying to help, and that are increasingly struggling, I think, to, to get ahead, we, we failed them and, and, the idea that they're not going to get this general education is only true."
Russ Roberts,00:51:58,"If you think that the credential itself is what, is what sustains, economic opportunity. And there is some, there is some truth to that, unfortunately, right? Obviously if you do not finish high school, if you don't, get a college degree, you are handicapped in a different set of ways. Other than just, you didn't learn what you could have learned. You are going to have trouble sometimes getting a door open, but it strikes me that, that, that whole process, the whole emphasis on credentials, as a gatekeeper is a mistake, writ large in that sense that I think there would be a better place if, if people were, more open to what other ways that people could become valuable. And, and this, the apprenticeship idea or vocational training, or these other options, we've been talking about all ways to broaden all kinds of aspects as by the way, not just how easy or hard it is to find a job, but your self esteem. You're right. If you live in a world where college is the measure of who's successful, it's when that isn't particularly true, but it's thought to be true. It's such a terrible, it's a terrible system. It seems like a mistake."
Robert Lerma,00:53:11,"Yeah. I want to add something about pride. Yeah. let's say you go to college, maybe a community college, even you graduate, but you know, you got a C plus average, you know, the person next to you got a, B plus average, the person next to him got an AA average. you know, that yeah, you got through, you can feel, Oh, you graduated even a four year college. and you can take some pride in that, but you know, that you're way below what some of your classmates have achieved. what apprenticeship does, is it widens the range of people who can be in the top 10%? Yeah. If you judge people only on the academic side, you know, only 10% are going to be in the top 10% kind of works that way. But if you judge people on how well they are doing, as hospital technicians or how well they're doing, in customer service or how well they're doing in welding, you know, then, you know, a lot more than 10% can be in the top 10%."
Robert Lerma,00:54:33,"And that one day I was giving a talk, in Washington at the home of the German ambassador. And there were a number of German managers of us intermediate, of U S subsidiaries. And when I got to the statement about how apprenticeship brings a sense of pride, Britain's a sense of being part of a, of a community of practice. They all started shaking there yet. Yeah. That was something that they all felt most of these managers had been through an apprenticeship, and when they completed their apprenticeship, they were very proud of what they had accomplished. And I think it gives people a sense that, of accomplishment that, you know, a C average, even in graduate won't get."
Russ Roberts,00:55:29,"Yeah. And it's, it's, the other aspect of William really talked about, which, which I think is certainly important to human dignity and flourishing and, and, and pride is the concept of mastery. and I think a lot of, if you meet a master, a person who has mastered something, I recently replaced the sliding doors at the back of my house. And, we finished the project and, and then we realized, Oh, wait, we've got to stay in them. And I thought we're paying them and to protect the wood. And I thought, Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. And the cost. And, and I called the installer and asked them who they recommended to, to put the stain on thinking, you know, it's pretty unskilled jobs staying it's unskilled, but I can't do it. Yeah. Other than that, I do it badly, but, okay."
Russ Roberts,00:56:28,"So I asked him and they recommended someone and they recommended a couple people and I called both and, and what was dramatically more expensive than the other. And the total was a shocking number and of how much it was going to cost. And I thought, Oh, this is awful. Obviously it's, I don't need to pay this amount. And I, I called my brother in law and he said, that was about what he expected. My brother-in-law's wiser than I have in these areas. He said, Hey, that's my, we didn't expect it. I said, why is it so expensive? He said, well, it takes, it takes about a day to do a day. I'm thinking this almost no wood in the door. It's almost all glass. How long could it actually take? And he said, well, you know, you've got to put four or five coats down, think four or five coats."
Russ Roberts,00:57:07,"Why would you want it and explain why you'd want to do that. And eventually I realized that one, it was a reasonable price and two, it was worth paying. So I, the guy comes to my house. And, first of all, he was just the most pleasant person. He was in his, in his seventies. And he was really good at what he did. And he knew it, but he didn't, it wasn't annoying or arrogant about it. it just went about his business. He had a little, I want to say he had a transistor radio Alfred to put music on for a while. He was painting, staining my doors and I, and these, I don't know, I've got my music and, and he had a little set of earplugs and he is in his world doing his job for hours. You know, there was some drying time and he had to come back and put extra coats on."
Russ Roberts,00:57:55,"And then he and I have two doors. So he did both, both doors. And, I, I can't tell you how much pleasure I got from paying to see a craftsman, a person who was exceedingly skilled and diligent about what he does. And, you know, even to the point, I just have to mention this cause it was so beautiful. He said, you know, he said, don't. I said, you know, I was asking him, I think it was a question of, there, there were a couple of nails and I, and it was a question of how, when you put the stain on and he said, if you, if you put it on too soon, he explained to me that, you know, your thumb print will, when you touch it, the oil from your fingers will, will color that. And it'll be stained and discolored. You'll never be able to fix it thinking, Oh, come on."
Russ Roberts,00:58:43,"But then it turned out. I think it's true. So there's all this nuance and small things, but, but his devotion to his craft was inspiring. And I think he took great pride in it. I know he took great pride in it. and, I think that opportunity for dignified work, you know, compared to what I do, which is, I mean, I'm proud of it. I like what I do. I think I'm pretty good at it, but it's not the only way to serve your fellow human beings is not the only way to get, have a meaningful life. And we've turned this race to, you know, test scores and grades and college prep into the, competition. As you say, only a few people by definition can Excel at. And, it's such a small corner of the human experience."
Robert Lerma,00:59:35,"We need a diversity of people in there in their capabilities. I'll tell you a story about a friend, a German friend of mine. And he sort of a bit of my mentor. And he told me that, when somebody becomes a doctor in a small town in Germany, people don't really pay much attention, but if somebody becomes a Meister, which is that next step, you first become a journeymen where you've completed your apprenticeship, but then it's like the PhD of that occupation, craftsmanship, you become a Meister, your pictures in the paper, everybody in the village knows about it. And that level of respect is, is just prominent. So absolutely it's a, it's something to admire. Yeah. It's something we've lost. Maybe I admired, especially because I'm not very good with my hands, right?"
Russ Roberts,01:00:40,"Yeah, no, I, that, that was partly by, you know, as you can tell from my story, that's partly my reaction, is the, T to say it's useful is to understate it dramatically, when, when a good plumber comes into your house and understands what needs to be done and does it well it's, accelerating might be a little strong, but maybe not."
Robert Lerma,01:01:07,"Yeah, well, you know, I visited a, a program in Baltimore that had a training facility and, the training facility was for the apprentices, but as it was also for plumbers to come back to upgrade further. So for example, what you need for pipe fitting in a hospital is far more elaborate than what you might need in a normal home, or even a, even an office building. So there are a lot of these things that if you're not into occupations, you miss, and if you're only into, you know, degrees even act, even graduate degrees, you, you, you certainly miss a lot,"
Russ Roberts,01:02:02,I guess that it has been Robert Lurman Robert. Thanks for being part of econ. Talk. Thank you.