Live and learn: A look at the Maine Apprenticeship Program | Maine's flourishing apprenticeship program tries to mesh plans for further growth with a stagnant budget
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Muddy Rudder Executive Chef Dave Smith with apprentices Carlie Mason (center) and Brittany Crawford
Photo/David A. Rodgers
On the job: Gene Ellis, director of the Maine Apprenticeship Program, hopes to expand the program to 1,000 apprentices by the end of the year
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Scott Fitzgerald (right), production supervisor at Kennebec Tool & Die in Augusta, works with machinist apprentice Jacob Thibodeau
When Brittany Crawford talks about juggling a full-time job and full course load at the local community college, she sounds like she’s describing an ordeal akin to boot camp.
“It’s a little rough, a little mentally challenging,” she says. “Right now, it’s more like survival.” Crawford, 20, works about 40 hours a week as a line cook at the Muddy Rudder restaurant in Brewer and takes classes in Eastern Maine Community College’s culinary arts pr ogram, taking on the challenge, she says, to increase her job prospects when she graduates.
“I don’t have a day off. If I’m not at school, I’m here [at the restaurant],” she says. The Bangor native hopes the hard work will pay off with a full-time pastry chef job in the Muddy Rudder kitchen.
Crawford is one of the more than 800 apprentices in the Maine Apprenticeship Program who are working in their chosen field while simultaneously earning a degree. The 65-year-old program installs young people and older career converts in full-time jobs at an average beginning wage of $11.09, and subsidizes their related school tuition up to $1,000 a year. The Maine Apprenticeship Program says the return on the dollar for its efforts is sizable: For every $1 spent, $49 is generated, based on wages paid to apprentices and their income taxes. But drop-out rates of around 50% and a long-stagnating budget are restraining the growth of a program supporters say is important to finding and retaining new talent.
Apprenticeships are an old-fashioned way of passing knowledge from generation to generation, and Maine’s program, operated by the Maine Department of Labor, has long been a reliable and relatively inexpensive economic development tool. Recently the program has had a growth spurt, increasing the number of registered apprentices by 265% between 2006 and 2007, while funding has remained unchanged. Ned McCann, director of the state’s Bureau of Employment Services, says the growth comes after a modernization push that began around 2003 — while the program continues to offer apprenticeship mainstays like welding or roofing, it is also trying to lure new companies like high-tech firms and early childhood education programs. “We’ve done a nice job here at expanding what people think of traditionally as an apprenticeship,” McCann says.
As the Maine Apprenticeship Program reinvents itself to fit a modern economy and signs up new companies in a range of fields, the program must contend with an annual budget that for five years has been stuck at around $600,000. Program Director Gene Ellis, who is also a program alumnus, says his focus is giving back money to students, but to do so he also must balance the program’s hefty overhead. Some $550,000 is spent on office operating expenses and on contracts with the Maine Building Trades Council in Augusta and regional career centers, which set up apprenticeships with companies, leaving only around $40,000 to pay for the tuition reimbursements that help motivate students to join.
“My position is, I’m going to do everything I can to grow the program,” says Ellis, who wants to enroll 1,000 apprentices by the end of this year. “The budget will be what it is. If I can find a way to work more efficiently or smarter, if we have to rebuild the program to accomplish that, we will.”
Shifting strategy, limited dollars
Government-backed apprenticeship programs became more prevalent around the turn of the century to meet the needs of the industrial economy, explains John Ladd, administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship. In 1937, Congress passed the Fitzgerald Act granting government oversight of apprentices, largely to protect their welfare. Since then, states have petitioned the government to run their own apprenticeship programs, including Maine, which launched its program in 1943. Not all of these states offer tuition reimbursements like Maine — some offer tax incentives to businesses, or like North Carolina, pass on the benefit to community colleges, providing the schools with extra funding as an incentive for them to develop academic programs for apprentices.
The United States has smaller apprenticeship programs than other countries like Germany or Denmark, where more than half of students age 16 enter apprenticeships, versus the 468,000 apprentices of all ages who register for the program in the United States. “I think the United States has had very poor post-secondary options for those who don’t get a four-year degree,” says University of Southern Maine economist Michael Hillard. “Between the ages of 18 to 25 is a time of tremendous uncertainty. We have a chaotic, fragmented system of transitioning from school to work.”
In the past seven years, though, the number of apprentices nationwide has climbed from 422,493 in 2001 to 468,000 today, according to the latest data the U.S. Office of Apprenticeship is able to provide. Most state apprentice programs now target what Ladd calls “high-growth firms,” such as health care, geospatial or biotechnology companies, to adapt to an economic shift away from construction or manufacturing jobs — the traditional base of apprenticeships in the country.
Since 2003, state funding for the Maine Apprenticeship Program has remained close to $600,000. From that $600,000, the total spent on tuition has grown from a lowly $5,729 in 2005, the oldest accurate data available, to $43,240 last year, according to Ellis. The average Maine apprentice receives up to $1,000 in annual tuition reimbursement on top of his or her apprentice salary. When Ellis began in 2004, the apprenticeship program was reimbursing students $100 per course, no matter the cost of the class. Ellis increased that to 50% of the cost for up to four classes a year, capping it at $250 per course.
Representative Ethan Strimling, Democratic chair of the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Labor, says the committee’s decision to keep the budget stable rather than cutting it is a good sign: “The fact that we flat-funded it is actually a testament to how much people recognize its importance. I support and would grow the program because we need more educational opportunities for people when times are tough. And these apprenticeships can lead to healthy middle class jobs.” Strimling says if he could secure additional funding he’d recommend using the money to retrain manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs.
Hanging on
The success of apprentice programs in Maine and around the country is hampered by high drop-out rates. Only about half of apprentices nationwide complete their programs, and Maine director Ellis says reimbursing students more for college typically does not improve those rates.
Ladd, administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship, says his office is addressing the drop-out rate by enhancing the quality of apprenticeships. “These are rigorous programs,” Ladd explains. “This is not a social service type program; they are competitive and rigorous. There’s a lot of expectations of people. Many of these programs are four years, five years, and they take commitment.”
To participate in the program, the apprentice and employer must adhere to fairly strict requirements. An apprenticeship can last as long as four or more years, and an employer must pay apprentices entry-level wages or higher while nurturing them through an on-site training program and allowing them flexibility to take classes suitable to their vocation. As apprentices gain experience and knowledge, their wages increase according to a pre-determined contract.
When they’re successful, an apprenticeship program is one way an industry or company facing a worker shortage can recruit new hires. Maine’s construction industry, for example, is facing a crisis as its workers, whose average age is 48 years old, grow older with few behind them to fill their positions. “[Construction] companies see it as a way to get someone into the industry and develop a relationship with someone who will become a long-term, dependable employee,” says John O’Dea, the Associated General Contractors of Maine’s spokesman. “Sometimes the hardest part of getting someone into the industry is getting someone to take that first step.”
Apprentices, too, can gain if they stick with the program. “When I do graduate, I have a little more experience under my belt,” Crawford says, referring to her Muddy Rudder cooking apprenticeship. “It just shows potential employers I have what it takes.”
Scott Fitzgerald, production supervisor at Kennebec Tool & Die in Augusta, oversees the apprentice program his company uses to recruit machinists. “It’s a struggle to find and keep people,” he says. “If you bring them up and train them, then you have exactly what you want.”
To protect against losing apprentices who, like many young employees these days, are prone to making quick professional jumps, the Bridgton Veterinary Hospital has incorporated some protections into its investment in its vet technician apprentices. It requires three months of work for roughly $100 in tuition reimbursements for courses that cost about $319.
As the Maine Apprenticeship Program tries to reach new industries, its director Ellis is searching for ways to cut costs so as to free up more money for tuition reimbursements. For instance, he’s looking into turning the apprenticeship program’s website into an interactive portal where his office can communicate with apprentices and their sponsors, thereby reducing the office’s heavy snail-mail load.
But certain realities of the program will likely not change, such as the exhaustion apprentices experience attending school and working full-time — a factor that likely does not help the program’s failure rates.
Dave Smith, the executive chef at the Muddy Rudder, says he has his own policy for helping apprentices handle their job demands while staying on top of their studies. “One thing I do insist on, and this is an advantage of working side by side with them, I know them,” he says. “I say, ‘You’re getting tired. You need a day off.’ I insist they have a day off from school and work.”
Rebecca Goldfine, Mainebiz staff writer, can be reached at rgoldfine@mainebiz.biz.
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