Free Republic

Last spring Dina Sosa Cruz sat with her parents and sister in the family’s living room and reviewed her options: a full academic ride to the University of the District of Columbia, or an apprenticeship in the insurance industry. The college route meant at the end of four years the 22-year-old would have a degree, a little debt and no work experience. The apprenticeship would leave her with a two-year degree, money in the bank and training in a profession that appealed to her. Her family was unanimous: Take the apprenticeship. “You’ll be worry free,” her mother said. Family conversations...

A federal judge in Texas ruled late last week that President Biden’s plan to cancel student debt is unconstitutional. It was a wise decision. Biden’s boon to borrowers would cost about $400 billion — a stiff price even in our bloated age of trillion-dollar deficits. Furthermore, forgiving student debt hides the real villains: the universities. America’s colleges, under the cloak of enriching young minds and imparting skills, run a scheme that would make Sam Bankman-Fried blush. Every year, they lure hundreds of thousands of students into debt servitude so they can get paid billions in taxpayer dollars and then leave...

A growing number of students are saying "no" to a traditional four-year college, instead choosing trade schools or apprenticeships after high school. Part of this has to do with the increasing cost of higher education. ... U.S. News reports that the average student debt is $30,000 for a recent college graduate. At 23 years old, Brady Woodel makes more than most recent college grads. Without a four-year degree, Brady takes home $25 an hour, while the average entry-level college grad makes $20. “When I came out and got my license, I would have earned as much money as I would...

Most Americans have been conditioned to believe that if you don’t enroll in college after high school, you have almost no chance at a successful life. That’s not true. As a 3rd-year engineering student working for a semester at an old-school machine tool company in Detroit, I got my first inkling that alternative paths into careers other than expensive college degrees existed. On my first day of work, the shop foreman told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to disturb the gray-haired “master craftsman” seated next to our enormous CNC machining center, reading the Wall Street Journal...

ESSEX JUNCTION — Like many industries in Vermont, water utilities are facing a worker shortage. Many operations specialists at drinking water and wastewater treatment plants across the state are approaching retirement age, and there are not currently enough trained professionals to fill their places. The Vermont Rural Water Association is spearheading an apprenticeship program to train the next generation of water and wastewater operators in communities throughout Vermont. This program will provide water utilities with the new employees they need as well as providing job training — and an alternative to an expensive college education — to Vermonters. Operators of...

DECATUR, Ala. – Ivanka Trump is coming to North Alabama Tuesday. Our news partners at AL.com report Trump will make an announcement on expanded workforce development and apprenticeship options across the state. The announcement will take place at the Alabama Robotics Technology Park. Representatives from the National Association of Manufacturers, the Manufacturing Institute, Toyota North Alabama, and Ingersoll Rand will also be on hand. Trump will tour the park and meet with students currently in the apprenticeship program. For more information, visit AL.com.

White, suburban men are reaping the benefits of public construction projects in the Syracuse area, despite the city's demographics, according to a new report. Advocacy groups are sounding the alarm, before a decision is made regarding the future of the Interstate-81 viaduct in Syracuse. The I-81 project is expected to be a massive undertaking with the potential to create lots of jobs for local residents. Andrew Croom, staff attorney with Legal Services of Central New York, which issued the report with the Urban Jobs Task Force, said they reviewed the payroll records for five construction projects in the Syracuse area,...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday establishing a workforce initiative to establish apprenticeships with U.S. companies and on-the-job training for American workers. “I will be signing an executive order to establish the National Council for the American Worker. That's a first. This Council will be made up of top officials across the government. We're also establishing an outside advisory board of industry leaders and experts, which we will announce in the coming weeks, very shortly. A lot of people want to be on that board very badly. I have some great people going on that board,” he said....

Experts testifying before Congress don’t typically start by describing the insights they’ve gained from a backed-up toilet. But when Reality TV star Mike Rowe appeared before the Senate committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 2011, he detailed two incidents involving malfunctioning commodes. When he was 12, he saw everything that went down the toilet reappear “in a rather violent and spectacular fashion,” Rowe recalled. His grandfather—Rowe describes him as a blue-collar magician who “woke up clean and came home dirty most of his life”—quickly ascertained the problem. What followed was an entire day of digging in the front yard,...

Even if you disagree with President Donald Trump and his administration, there are some positive kernels out there. Trump has put an emphasis on jobs, for example, specifically jobs for the struggling middle and lower class. Although those promised jobs might not necessarily come to fruition, it’s good to hear somebody at least talk about blue-collar struggles. One way the president is focusing on jobs is by attempting to bring back apprenticeships. Apprenticeships, of course, are on-the-job training programs that used to be quite popular but have fizzled out with time. There are still plenty of them out there, but...

It will also provide more funding and create a task force of business leaders to help promote the programs across new sectors, as well as assess the effectiveness of the job-training programs now in place. Trump plans to sign an executive order that would reorient and expand ApprenticeshipUSA, a grant program that was previously championed by the Obama administration and has been supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Trump's executive order also requires all federal agencies that participate in apprenticeship programs or workforce training to examine whether their efforts are duplicative or could be combined with other programs to greater...

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to substantially increase the number of U.S. apprenticeships from the current 500,000 (minuscule for the size of the economy) by doubling the amount the government spends on apprenticeship programs. Trump’s emphasis on this plan is cause for optimism that he will significantly improve the number and quality of apprenticeships in the economy. Trump’s plan will be a boon to employers. First, they will have a strong role in its composition through a task force that Trump announced. Successful apprenticeship programs work best when designed by employers around their own needs. The...

President Donald Trump’s push to expand apprenticeship opportunities is being met with support from business leaders who are now pledging to take part. Trump has put working class issues at the forefront of his agenda. He signed an executive order Thursday aimed at increasing the number apprenticeship programs. The president hopes to address the skills gap by ensuring people are being trained for jobs that exist. While there are plenty of jobs available, the challenge has been a significant divide between the skills companies need and the training and experience workers have. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week...

Join us as President Donald J. Trump delivers the Weekly Address. https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/videos/1344502378970825/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

Indian-American CEOs Indra Nooyi of Pepsico and Ajay Banga of Mastercard along with India's IT major Wipro on Saturday joined scores of US companies in welcoming President Donald Trump's ambitious apprenticeship programme aimed at developing job-related skills among the workforce. . . "We applaud the president's commitment to industry-driven apprenticeships as a powerful tool to build the skilled workforce prepared for the jobs of the 21st century," Business Roundtable -- a group of chief executive officers of leading US companies -- said in a full-page advertisement released in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times today. . ....

President Donald Trump wants to blow out the number of apprentices working for U.S. companies — but it doesn't look like he'll spend the money to do it. Apprenticeships blend on-the-job work with paid classroom instruction, and they usually last two to six years. The federal government has regulated and certified apprenticeships since 1937, but the jobs were not actively promoted by more recent presidents until the Obama administration. Trump wants to create 5 million new apprenticeships over the next five years, which would be almost 10 times the total that exist now. But the money he has appropriated to...

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to expand apprenticeship programs for students and workers: We're joined today by Secretary Acosta, Secretary Ross, and Administrator McMahon as we prepare to make a historic announcement to train Americans for the jobs of the future. We have a lot of companies moving into this country. You see the unemployment rate is at a very, very low level. Job enthusiasm and manufacturing, business enthusiasm is at record levels; never been higher. And a lot of good numbers are coming out, including almost $4 trillion in gain to the stock markets since the election...

President Trump is trying to focus this week on one thing: Jobs, jobs and more jobs. The White House is dubbing it "workforce development week" and has filled the president's schedule with workplace visits, speeches and roundtable discussions on the subject. The aim is to present a fix to a big U.S. problem: job skills. What's clear: Trump wants to make a big commitment to expand apprenticeship programs. What's unclear: How his budget will pay for it and whether apprenticeships alone can fix the country's massive job skills gap. Trump's budget proposal allocates $90 million for grants to apprenticeships, but...

The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times Eastern Daylight Time): 5:30 p.m. President Donald Trump says he wants every high school in America to offer apprenticeship programs. Trump also says at a round table conversation at Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin that he loves the "name Apprentice" — a reference to the reality television show he used to host.....

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker said Monday that when President Donald Trump comes to Wisconsin, he will see that people outside of Washington "still like his policies." Walker spoke on the Mike Gallagher radio show about a fundraiser Trump is hosting for Walker in Milwaukee on Tuesday night. Trump is also touring a technical college with Walker in the Milwaukee area. The fundraiser comes as Walker prepares for an expected re-election run in 2018. Walker didn't initially endorse Trump, but came around after he secured the Republican nomination. Trump carried Wisconsin by less than a percentage point.....