'Blue-collar aristocrats' thrive in German economy

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Mallory Noe-Payne/WGBH

Roger Heps is in his final year of a three-year apprenticeship at Bayer. The program is part of Germany's vocational-education system.

by Kirk Carapezza, Produced by Mallory Noe-Payne

n a sprawling chemical plant in the town of Leverkusen, in northern Germany, Bayer trains thousands of students every year to become future employees.

Roger Heps, 19, is one of those trainees. He’s learning to run the plant where the primary ingredient in aspirin is manufactured. Heps is in a classic German apprenticeship. It includes on- and off-the-job training, while he studies at a technical college.

Germany’s tracking system divides children up at a young age, placing them on different paths; some students are selected for eight years of university prep school, others for six years leading to an apprenticeship instead of college.

The German apprenticeship system provides for a well-trained workforce, but also gives many young Germans a ticket to the middle class. Youth unemployment in Germany is currently 8 percent, half of what it is in the United States. 

The German apprenticeship system provides for a well-trained workforce, but also gives many young Germans a ticket to the middle class. Youth unemployment in Germany is currently 8 percent, half of what it is in the United States.

Students at Bayer get paid for their work, learn trade skills and are very likely to be hired by the company.

Mallory Noe-Payne/WGBH

Companies and the German state cover the cost of students’ training, but students at Bayer also get paid about $1,200 a month.

Since Bayer hires 90 percent of the people it trains, Heps is optimistic he’ll have a good job at the end of his third and final year of training. When he does, he could be earning a starting salary of more than $60,000.

Blue-collar aristocracy

Freider Wolf teaches political science at the University of Heidelberg, one of Germany's most prestigious institutions. He says the 60 percent of Germans who choose the apprenticeship program over traditional college have become the country’s “blue-collar aristocracy.”

"If you can support yourself on industrial income — buy a house, drive a big car — why do you necessarily have to go to university?" Wolf says. "[These workers] are highly skilled and the education they receive is attuned to the needs of these industries."

Freider Wolf, political science professor at the University of Heidelberg.

Mallory Noe-Payne/WGBH

Wolf says for the most part these future craftsmen are very well respected.

“For the competitiveness of the German economy, they have much more impact than the political scientists we're training here [at university],” he says. “The problem now is that all ways of education compete for a limited number of young people."

Lessons for America

Comparatively, Nancy Hoffman, vice president of the Boston-based nonprofit Jobs for the Future, says the U.S. doesn’t have a strong history of vocational education.

“We don’t have a tradition of employers thinking long-term about building a pipeline of young professionals,” she says. “We have a screen for employees which is, ‘Do you have a four-year college degree?’”

Since the 1970s, Americans have seemingly stigmatized vocational education. Hoffman says in large part that was because of America’s racial history.

"Vocational education was the place where you dumped all the kids who couldn’t do anything else and unfortunately a lot of those kids turned out to be black and brown kids,” Hoffman says. “So, not only did you have a working class stigma but you had a stigma of, ‘You’re sending all of our minority kids to these schools.'”

Instead, says Hoffman, the U.S. should consider adopting a system similar to the German model, something that allows young people to be in a mix of work and school.

Related: Obama proposes free community college plan

“They may turn out to be philosophers and sociologists, but they may also turn out to love engineering and IT,” Hoffman says. “We provide very few opportunities for young people to have that kind of experience."

But American employers have traditionally been slow to invest in apprenticeship programs. In Leverkusen, Beyer apprentice Heps says he is passionate about what he's learning, and he knew he wanted to work here from an early age.

"It started in seventh or eighth grade, and I noticed it was fun to get to know the chemical elements and see the reactions. That was when I decided to work here," he says.

Inside the Beyer complex in Leverkusen, Germany.

Mallory Noe-Payne/WGBH

Even though he’s 19, he’s not concerned about changing his mind.

“I'm working at the chemical plant and they are changing the work every week. There's so much going on,” he says.

In the United States, the German model is slowly catching on. Eleven states, including Massachusetts, Virginia and California, are trying to introduce on-the-job training for students in some schools.

This is the third story in a series from WGBH's "On Campus" team, examining higher education in Germany as it compares to the U.S.

Featured in: Marketplace for Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - 14:07

Why young foreigners choose Germany

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Apprentices from Spain, Sweden and across Europe are all heading to Germany where there is a shortage of workers. Photo: DPA

Published on: 20 Jan 2014 10:10 CET

   

European politicians of all hues have heaped praise on the German apprenticeship model. The Local's Patrick Reilly meets young Swedish job seekers ready to head south for a salary, despite the language barrier.

On a snowy January day, the waiting room of the Malmö branch of the Swedish Public Employment Service is curiously quiet. A group of young people are inspecting their CVs ahead of a presentation entitled ‘The job of my life’.

Berlin and Hamburg are calling for a number of young Swedes who, fed up of being unemployed back home, are tempted by Germany’s apprentice programme. The scheme offers not only a salary, but free German lessons.

Germany’s apprentice scheme has been lauded for keeping youth unemployment low, and has been cited by Sweden’s Finance Minister Anders Borg as something his own government should try to emulate.

In Sweden, almost 20 percent of those aged between 15-24 cannot find work. In Greece and Spain it is one in two. But at 8 per cent, Germany's youth unemployment rate is the lowest among EU countries making it a tempting location for the young and jobless.

In late 2012 Germany signed a deal with six EU countries - Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Slovakia and Latvia - to introduce Germany’s apprenticeship model to their countries.

It also made it easier for young people to find employers in Germany with the aim of setting up 30,000 exchanges. 

And its strong economy has turned Germany into an immigration country. The number of foreigners living in Germany grew at its fastest rate for 20 years in 2012 and now stands at a record level of 7.2 million.

But why Germany?

“Why not? There is nothing for me here in Sweden,” Molly Stigsson, 24, from Halmstad, western Sweden, tells The Local. "So many people my age are all fighting for the same jobs."

Stigsson studied journalism and photography but has struggled to find work since completing her studies. She admits that she’s been unemployed on and off for the past five years and wants to try something else.

“I’m applying for some baker and pastry chef positions as that's been a dream of mine. Going to Germany seems exciting to me,” she says, having ruled out going back to school in Sweden. 

Chef Robin Hermansson, 21, travelled from Linköping, southern Sweden, for his interview and says he has been out of work since last March.

“It’s tough to find work in Sweden for my profession. I’m here partly because of the job situation in my own country but also because this is an amazing opportunity,” Hermansson says enthusiastically.

Pitching the ‘Job of my life’ is Eures (European Employment Agency) adviser Annette Zellmer. She says that Germany is “desperate” for apprentices in part because of the country’s low birth rate.

Attracting Swedes to Germany is not a new idea for Eures. A previous apprentice scheme failed as only candidates who could speak German were able to apply.

Now the language barrier has been removed, with mandatory lessons included as part of the training. The move has seen an upturn in interest from job-seeking Swedes. 

Carpenters and bankers

“This is company-based education that lasts between two and half and three years. By coming to Germany, you can add to your reputation and develop further in your career,” Zellmer tells the young Swedes during the presentation.

The programme, which is funded by the German government until 2016, wants to find apprentices aged between 18-35 to work in industries as diverse as carpentry and banking.

Eures has calculated that there are 348 different occupations potentially available, with similar apprentice schemes for job-seekers from Portugal and Spain proving successful.

“Sweden looks very seriously at youth unemployment as the figure is quite high. Any chance to go abroad for work and education is encouraged as it’s a fantastic opportunity. Swedes adapt quite easily to Germany and have a good reputation there,” Maria Bergström, a Swedish Eures adviser, tells The Local. 

Removing barriers

Getting to grips with the German language is key for any wannabe apprentice. Following the failure of the previous scheme, Eures has pulled out all the stops with an estimated 600 lessons (each lasting 40 minutes) to be completed by August 1st by the candidates.

Under a special arrangement with Sweden, the first 400 lessons can be studied online from home, with the remaining classes to be finished in Germany. For most Swedes, it will be their first exposure to German. Indeed, many of those who attended the presentation in Malmö have never even been to the country before. 

“I’m a bit nervous about it as I don’t know any German at all but I am going to try to learn,” says Stigsson while Hermansson says “It’ll be fine... I think.”

And if any of the Swedes were under the impression they could cruise through the lessons when they move to Germany, such thoughts were swiftly extinguished by Eures’ German adviser.

“You can’t sit around and look out the window. When it comes to school exams you have to pass them,” Zellmer says matter-of-factly.

Funding for the language course is part of the modular programme, which also covers the cost of living. The most any apprentice can earn is €818 a month, but that amount may be reduced depending on accommodation costs.

While many expats to Sweden may be surprised to learn there isn’t a washing machine provided when handed the keys to a flat, in Germany you’ll have to do without a fridge and oven too when you move into an apartment.

“A typical German flat is basically empty but the employer helps the apprentices find furniture. And as part of the programme there is social assistance to help with things like opening a bank account and making friends. You are treated just like any other German apprentice,” says Zellmer.

Swedes who are successful and complete the first two phases of the programme, which includes the 600 language lessons, are then eligible for a vocational training contract with a German company combining work and studies, which can last up to three and a half years

One Swede eager to make the move is Zlatan Mukladzija Kemal. He took a six-hour train trip from Borås on the west coast in order to come to Malmö for his 30 minute interview.

“Had this scheme been around a few years ago I would have gone then,” Mukladzija Kemal, who has previously worked in the hospitality sector, tells The Local. After sitting through the one-hour presentation the 21-year-old is even more determined to fulfill his German dream. 

"I’ve been in Sweden most of my life and I’m a bit bored of it," he says. 

And unemployed skilled workers from other areas of Europe are also being sought out by recruiting programmes to plug shortages in the German workforce.

 

A scheme started in 2012 by the Chamber of Crafts for Munich and Upper Bavaria aimed to put Spanish semi-skilled workers in touch with Bavarian employers in need of labour.

 

"Given the high youth unemployment in Spain at the moment, there was this idea that there are a lot of people in Spain who could do the work, [and] we have a lot of companies that need to fill their vacancies," Elisabeth Kirchbichler, one of the coordinators of the program, told Spiegel in May 2013. 

 

Kirchbichler said that officials from the local chamber of commerce in Cordoba, Spain had given her over 1,000 job applications from Spanish people who wanted work in Germany.

The German Education System: March 2015 series, WGBH

WGBH SERIES:  GERMAN EDUCATION SYSTEM

Four-part series focusing on what we can learn from Germany.  (Thanks to David Aubin for sharing the link.)


Part 1. How can we CONTROL THE COSTS of higher education?  (Is this even desirable?)

Comments:

• 
  

  ustjojo • a day ago

  
  

  p.s. Essen is NOT a small suburb of Cologne but rather a vibrant city of its own. In fact, it has a population of over 500,000. ... This story... is really very good at its core.

  
  
• 
  

  justjojo • 2 days ago

  
  

  Some information valuable and interesting and on the mark, while other information was misleading or downright false.
  •  In my 8+ years studying at two different German Unis, I rarely sat in classes with more than 20 students in them. In fact, most of my seminars and courses had anywhere from ten to twenty students, many of whom I got to know quite well over the years.
  • There is definitely student housing at all German universities (Studentenwohnheime) - perhaps not exactly the same as in America but existent nonetheless. I lived in a wonderful dorm at the Uni in Bonn. All the students on each floor shared a kitchen which provided the opportunity to get to know other students very well.
  • I also had the experience at both the Uni in Bonn and in Hamburg where I spent several years studying linguistics that I got to know my professors and even met with them outside of the Uni setting.
  • As a professor now at a state college I can guarantee you that the professors in Germany make similar salaries and probably put in fewer hours than their American colleagues. They also get more sabbaticals than we do.
  --- But yes, the German Unis lack many of the bells and whistles and definitely all the administrative bloat!

Part 2.  What CAN'T WE MATCH IN THE USA in comparison with higher education in Germany?

Part 3.  Germany produces happy, successful and even "ARISTOCRATIC" BLUE COLLAR WORKERS, -- rather than so-called cultural misfits in the USA: those people who don't dream of going to college.

Try a paid apprenticeship!  A company WILL PAY YOU ~ $1200/month to learn to be a good employee.  Once your 3 year training period is over, most apprentice-graduates will then get hired by their host company -- and salaries starting at US$ 60,000 aren't unheard of.  Compare that 4 year period with being a US college student for 4 years, paying even $60,000/year x 4 for a diploma:

                                     Year 1      Year 2      Year 3      Year 4           Total
German Apprenticeship     $14,400    $14,400   $14,400    $60,000     $103,000            INCOME!
USA  4 year University      $22-60K  $22-60K  $22-60K  $22-60K    $88,000-240,000  in DEBT  

Part 4.  How TALENT AND ABILITIES ARE CHANNELED in Germany, which keeps kids engaged and productive.

The beginning part of this report shows a strong American bias.  Most often, parents who attended university themselves are going to wish that for their children, too.  But the system succeeds as is in many ways, since it tends to support kids at the pace at which they are currently developing.  Should a student develop to the point of wanting more of a challenge, those separate educational tracks can merge.

Comment:

Martin Holzner • 12 hours ago

great report, but they forgot to mention one important detail: the decision what track a student goes on is not final. There are many options to change track later on. Kids that start slower can develop at their own pace, and switch later on ...  

 A further point is that the Realschule and the Hauptschule are merging into a Gesamtschule (or inclusive school) so that


 

Oh-oh! Vorsicht (be careful!) with that Fork Lift Truck

This ridiculous film supposedly gets shown at many safety seminars. 
Please don't watch this, if you dislike gorey stuff.  

VW Apprenticeships in Tennesee

Marketplace  by Blake Farmer Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - 16:19

Volkswagen brings German-style vocational training to the US

Courtesy of VW

• Story

Courtesy of VW

Courtesy of VW

 

One of the world’s largest automakers has stepped into the fringe of American education. Volkswagen has imported its German-style apprenticeship program to the U.S., and American labor officials hope it might become a model.

“It’s a totally different mindset. It’s a totally different culture,” says Ilker Subasi, who heads the Volkswagen Academy on site at the company’s Chattanooga plant.

Subasi sees a stigma in the U.S. against technical education. But in Germany, more than half of high school graduates go into vocational programs like VW’s. Subasi himself was once a VW apprentice.
Once accepted, the company’s U.S. “mechatronics” students earn a small stipend over the course of three years while learning how to maintain robotics. If they stick with the program, they’re hired with a starting salary of $22 an hour. They also earn an associate’s degree from Chattanooga State Community College and a DIHK certification from the German American Chamber of Commerce, which would allow them to work at German auto plants around the world.

“At first, I was like, ‘Am I going to be pushing around a broom? Am I going to be changing light bulbs?’” recalls Alex Bizzell, a 22-year-old who graduated last week. “It’s been a substantial effort to do it, but now I know exactly what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”

The VW school is heavily subsidized by the state of Tennessee as part of an incentive package to bring the automaker to the state in 2009. A stadium-sized building beside the plant that builds the Passat houses the classroom space and hands-on learning. 

Inside, a robotic arm two stories tall swings through the air, as a student practices programming machines like the ones used next door. Michael Regan says he tried a year of community college before applying.

“You know, I was never that really into writing and all of that,” he says. “I’m not that big of a writer. I was just always more of a hands-on person. That’s just how I learn better.”  At Regan’s graduation, a top executive told the dozen students he hopes they will ultimately retire with VW.

Some graduates are taking the option to spend a year working at a German plant. Others are deferring their job to finish a four-year degree. Regan starts work immediately – albeit on the night shift.
“Look at the benefits and the future he has with this company,” says Regan’s mom, Sharon. “And that’s why you go to college is to work for a big company – most people – to make a good living and have good benefits. And he’s going to have all that -- at 22.”

Featured in: Marketplace for Tuesday August 19, 2014

Stihl summer camp gives teens cutting-edge training

By Stacy Parker  at  The Virginian-Pilot  © July 18, 2014  VIRGINIA BEACH 

 

Other photos available for purchase -- rsb 

 

 

Summer Sparrow has a steady hand. Her teammates noticed, and so did a Stihl vice president. It helped her master a new skill: soldering.

"I was really excited to learn how to do it," said Summer, 14. "When I tried it, I found out I was pretty good at it."  She stripped wires and soldered them to pins. Then she connected them to a circuit board on the way to creating a wireless speaker.

This is a summer camp of a different kind.

Nearly 40 area high school students attending this fourth annual Stihl Manufacturing Technology Summer Camp have a job to fulfill on an assembly line this week.  Teams will manufacture the speakers out of an array of parts.  Members of the team that creates the best process win $1,000 scholarships to study STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - subjects after high school.

Stihl created the camp to give teens a creative experience in a manufacturing setting, said Christian Koestler, vice president of operations. The German company produces chain saws and other outdoor power tools at its U.S. headquarters off Lynnhaven Parkway.  The company chose campers through written essays and classroom grades.  Each team started the four-day camp with $50,000 in play money.

High school seniors on a "supplier" team hustled in the back corner of the room to assemble kits including batteries and audio receivers for the teams producing the speakers. The fuel tank of Stihl's backpack blowers serves as the container for the components. Orange speaker grills and piston-shaped volume knobs are created on-site with a 3-D printer.

The teens worked together at several stations Thursday. While one used a mill to bore holes in the fuel tank, two others teamed up to solder wires. A timer on one of their phones kept them on task.
"It's interesting to me to make something in a certain amount of time," said Murell Weimar, 17.

It's not just about speed. Teams must budget their money. They have the opportunity to earn more throughout the camp and purchase additional parts. Soldering is the bottleneck of the assembly line because it takes time, but a pre-soldered amp costs 10,000 "dollars."

They will test their skills by building three wireless speakers before Saturday's two-hour competition to see who can produce the most with the best quality in a given time.  "You see the natural leaders arising and you see the worker bees," Koestler said Thursday.  "You see teams focused on the process and teams focused on the product. Those focused on the product try to make it pretty; those focused on the process are figuring out how much time they need for each step. It will show on competition day who comes out ahead."

Members of Team "Amps" smiled and nodded their heads as Smash Mouth's "All Star" blasted from one of their smartphones just before the lunch break Thursday. They had produced the first working wireless speaker in the room and all eyes were on them.

"All the students are engaged," said Andrew Jaeckle, STIHL's manager of talent acquisition.

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com

GERMAN APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM in the USA

NOTE:  I miss the 1990's, when EWAG employed 3 students from NKHS as paid apprentices, in such fields as Management, Mechantronics, and Engineering.  Included were various paid semester courses at different colleges, universities and trade schools, depending on need, which ultimately led to a diploma, without tuition, in fact, while being paid an increasing salary as the semesters went on.  What a deal! 

  NYTIMES VIDEO:

http://nyti.ms/1c3SNln    

 Here's the related article:

GREER, S.C. — For Joerg Klisch, hiring the first 60 workers to build heavy engines at his company’s new factory in South Carolina was easy. Finding the next 60 was not so simple.

“It seemed like we had sucked up everybody who knew about diesel engines,” said Mr. Klisch, vice president for North American operations of Tognum America. “It wasn’t working as we had planned.” 

So Mr. Klisch did what he would have done back home in Germany: He set out to train them himself. Working with five local high schools and a career center in Aiken County, S.C. — and a curriculum nearly identical to the one at the company’s headquarters in Friedrichshafen — Tognum now has nine juniors and seniors enrolled in its apprenticeship program. 

Inspired by a partnership between schools and industry that is seen as a key to Germany’s advanced industrial capability and relatively low unemployment rate, projects like the one at Tognum are practically unheard-of in the United States. 

But experts in government and academia, along with those inside companies like BMW, which has its only American factory in South Carolina, say apprenticeships are a desperately needed option for younger workers who want decent-paying jobs, or increasingly, any job at all. And without more programs like the one at Tognum, they maintain, the nascent recovery in American manufacturing will run out of steam for lack of qualified workers. 

“South Carolina offers a fantastic model for what we can do nationally,” said Ben Olinsky, co-author of a forthcoming report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington research organization, recommending a vast expansion in apprenticeships. 

Despite South Carolina’s progress and the public support for apprenticeships from President Obama, who cited the German model in his last State of the Union address, these positions are becoming harder to find in other states. Since 2008, the number of apprentices has fallen by nearly 40 percent, according to the Center for American Progress study. 

“As a nation, over the course of the last couple of decades, we have regrettably and mistakenly devalued apprenticeships and training,” said Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor. “We need to change that, and you will hear the president talk a lot about it in the weeks and months ahead.”

In November, the White House announced a new $100 million grant program aimed at advancing technical training in high schools. But veteran apprenticeship advocates say the Obama administration has been slow to act. 

“The results have not matched the rhetoric in terms of direct funding for apprenticeships so far,” said Robert Lerman, a professor of economics at American University in Washington. “I’m hoping for a new push.” 

In Germany, apprentices divide their time between classroom training in a public vocational school and practical training at a company or small firm. Some 330 types of apprenticeships are accredited by the government in Berlin, including such jobs as hairdresser, roofer and automobile electronics specialist. About 60 percent of German high school students go through some kind of apprenticeship program, which leads to a formal certificate in the chosen skill and often a permanent job at the company where the young person trained. 

If there is a downside to the German system, it is that it can be inflexible, because a person trained in a specific skill may find it difficult to switch vocations if demand shifts. 

In South Carolina, apprenticeships are mainly funded by employers, but the state introduced a four-year, annual tax credit of $1,000 per position in 2007 that proved to be a boon for small- to medium-size companies. The Center for American Progress report recommends a similar credit nationwide that would rise to $2,000 for apprentices under age 25. 

The emphasis on job training has also been a major calling card overseas for South Carolina officials, who lured BMW here two decades ago and more recently persuaded France’s Michelin and Germany’s Continental Tire to expand in the state. 

“The European influence is huge,” said Brad Neese, director of Apprenticeship Carolina, which links the state’s technical college system with private companies to help create specialized programs. “They are our strongest partners.” 

 European companies are major employers in the state, with more than 28,000 workers for German companies alone. The influx has helped stanch much of the bleeding caused by the decades-long erosion of jobs in the textile industry, once the economic bulwark of the Palmetto state. 

Of course, there are other reasons foreign companies have moved here. For starters, wages are lower than the national average. Even more important for many manufacturers, unions have made few inroads in South Carolina. 

Still, the close cooperation between employers and the state educational system is unusual, and despite initial skepticism on both sides, apprenticeship opportunities are rapidly expanding both for high-school age students and for older workers. 

Apprenticeship Carolina started in 2007 with 777 students at 90 companies. It now has 4,500 students at more than 600 companies in the state, with the typical apprentice in his or her late 20s. Mr. Neese’s goal is to have 2,000 companies by 2020. 

To help develop his program, Mr. Neese has traveled to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where apprenticeships are thriving, youth unemployment is relatively low and blue-collar jobs are still prized. That contrasts with the United States, where the economic fortunes of younger people with just a high school diploma have plummeted, and the unemployment rate among workers age 16 to 19 stands at more than 20 percent. 

“This generation has taken a huge hit from the economic crisis,” said Alexander Gelber, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and a former senior Treasury official. “Apprenticeships offer people the possibility of building skills when they often don’t have many other options.”

So why have they not caught on in the United States like in Germany, which has 1.8 million apprentices with less than one-third the population? 

Besides a longstanding stigma attached to vocational education, opposition from entrenched interests on both the left and the right has hobbled past efforts to promote apprenticeships, including under President Clinton in the 1990s. 

Joerg Klisch discovered this firsthand when he started seeking support for the program in 2011.

School officials were wary of allowing a private company to dictate the curriculum. Meanwhile, among employers, “there seems to be a perception that apprenticeship means unions,” Mr. Klisch said. “It doesn’t, but we have to overcome this hurdle.” 

Here in Greer, where more than 7,000 employees produce over 300,000 S.U.V.’s and other luxury cars a year in a sprawling, ultramodern BMW factory, Richard Morris, vice president for assembly and logistics, identifies one of the company’s biggest problems: a serious shortage of medium-skilled workers who specialize in mechatronics, or repairing robots and metal presses when they break down and operating the computers that dot the paint shop, body shop and assembly shop. Not only do these jobs pay better than typical assembly-line positions, they also open up avenues for advancement.  Werner Eikenbusch, manager of work force development for BMW in the Americas, is himself the product of an apprenticeship program in Germany who later went back to school and earned a master’s degree in engineering. He helped create the BMW Scholars program in 2011, he said, “to build the skills from the ground up.” 

The BMW Scholars are older than Tognum’s apprentices — mostly in their 20s and 30s — and they study full-time at local technical colleges for two years while also working in the BMW factory for 20 hours a week. 

“It is a struggle, but if you know how to manage the time, it is not hard,” said Benjamin Peoples, a 27-year-old BMW Scholar who dropped out of Clemson University a few years ago because he could no longer afford it. “I wanted to work with my hands and with machines, but I didn’t have experience with robots.” 

Mr. Eikenbusch has been pitching the program to European parts suppliers in the area, as well as to executives at Boeing, which began building sections of the new 787 Dreamliner in Charleston in 2011. He hopes they will follow BMW’s lead. 

“We need to find a way to establish two-year training programs on a broader scale,” he said. “Everybody who I hire is someone who is not available for our suppliers to hire.”

Apprenticeships: What we can learn from Germany [BUSINESS WEEK]

What Germany Can Teach the U.S. About Vocational Education

Posted by: Harold L. Sirkin on April 29, 2013

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-29/what-germany-can-teach-the-u-dot-s-dot-about-vocational-education

For years now, U.S. educators have invested massive amounts of talent and money on two goals:

• preventing students from dropping out of high school and 
• increasing the percentage of high school graduates who go on to college.

We do everything possible to encourage college attendance. In the 2011-12 academic year, for example, one program alone—the federal Pell Grant program, intended to help low- and moderate-income students finance college—cost taxpayers $34.5 billion, about half the entire U.S. Department of Education budget. 

Yet many Pell Grant recipients never graduate. They flounder; they drop out; they become statistics.
How can we prevent such waste?

A new report from the College Board, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, offers a variety of useful ideas, such as larger grants for students who take heavier college course loads. Tougher schedules show that students are serious about graduating.

That’s one good approach. But let me suggest another, which Germany has pioneered.

Our friends in Germany know—as we should—that some students are bored by traditional studies; some don’t have the aptitude for college; some would rather work with their hands; and some are unhappy at home and just need to get away. They realize that everyone won’t benefit from college, but they can still be successful and contribute to society.

Americans often see such students as victims. Germans see these students as potential assets who might one day shine if they’re matched with the right vocation. And it has a system in place—a partnership of employers and unions with government—to do the matching and provide the necessary training.

As the New York Times Magazine recently noted, Germany’s vocational education program doesn’t focus entirely on factory work. Consider the story of the noted chef Claus-Peter Lumpp. “Lumpp’s culinary ascent began with the simple urge to drop out of high school around the time of his 16th birthday,” the Times’ Nicholas Kulish reported. “His widowed mother had remarried, and the family moved to another town. Everything felt off: the new school, the new people. His mother gave him permission to leave school, but only if he found an apprenticeship.” Lumpp found that apprenticeship in the kitchen of the Hotel Bareiss. Today, Lumpp’s Restaurant Bareiss has a three-star rating from the prestigious Michelin guide—and most of the chefs in his kitchen were mentored under the same system that brought his talents to the fore.

As a result of this system, few Germans find themselves unemployable. The youth unemployment rate, for example, was just 7.7 percent in February, well below that of the U.S. (16.2 percent officially, excluding those who have dropped out of the labor market) and the euro zone as a whole (23.9 percent). Overall unemployment in Germany was just 5.4 percent in February.

Administered by the Federal Institute for Vocational Training and Education, Germany’s vocational education program is a dual system: Students learn in the classroom, and they learn by doing. Typically, trainees attend vocational school one or two days per week, studying the theory and practice of their occupation as well as economics and social studies, foreign languages, and other general subjects. They also do a working apprenticeship in their chosen field. During this period, trainees receive about one-third of the salary of a trained skilled worker.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, a majority of German students (some 51.5 percent) choose this path.
America for too long has attempted a cookie-cutter approach to secondary education: Stay in school; go to college; and we’ll all be happy. To our continued consternation, it doesn’t always work.
If America wants to remain competitive, we have to keep our young people engaged.  Germany has the right formula. U.S. business and political leaders should learn from the German approach and invest in creating and supporting a German-style vocational education system. Businesses will get the skilled workers they need, young people will see new career opportunities open up to them, our middle class will be strengthened, and our economy will benefit.

Obama Features German Education

in his State of the Union Address, 2013

Here are two quotes:

•  The CEO of Siemens* America – a company that brought hundreds of new jobs to
North Carolina – has said that if we upgrade our infrastructure, they'll bring even more jobs.


             * Siemens is one of Germany's largest technology companies.

•  Let's also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they're ready for a job.  At schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools, the City University of New York, and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering.


This isn't to endorse Mr. Obama, but rather to highlight the positives in German education.

You can read the president's address at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/13/state-of-the-union-full-text