Lighting the fuse on a potential apprenticeship blowup.
Hungry for growth, the Trump Administration signals it's going to try to fix one of the gnarliest problems in Registered Apprenticeship. Good luck.
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I swear I try to avoid hyperbole in this space, but a guidance document published on Monday by the second Trump Administration could fundamentally change—and possibly blow up—Registered Apprenticeship, the voluntary system by which America regulates the pay-to-learn program.
How? By enforcing a law as it was written nearly 20 years ago.
The guidance effectively warns that the Department of Labor will finally start to enforce a ban on decisions on program registration by what are called State Apprenticeship Councils, or SACs. These appointed bodies of apprenticeship interest groups have had an outsized role in deciding apprenticeship registration before and after 2008, when the Bush Administration tried to ban their influence as it was leaving office. DOL hasn’t really enforced that rule, and there are powerful SACs around the country, typically in bluer states, that play an open role in deciding which programs get registration and which don’t.
It’s understandable how Trump II got here. SACs can contribute to slow growth by shrugging off good registration applications for political reasons. DOL is definitely looking for ways to meet White House expectations for massive apprenticeship gains toward one million apprentices, an effort that has had disappointing returns thus far.
One of my jobs used to be navigating the relationship between states and DOL on apprenticeship. The more I played through scenarios this week, the less confident I felt we might reach a good outcome here. Aggressively enforcing the Bush rule now—and Trump II is nothing but aggressive—could result in years of litigation and torpedo Registered Apprenticeship administration in ways that are bordering on apocalyptic.
At the same time, slow state registration is a problem someone will have to eventually sort out. The question is whether DOL is up for it—or if this is the right White House to have at the controls.