Should America re-consider apprenticeships in order to decrease youth unemployment?

The tough part about getting a job is often that the people who are doing the hiring want to hire someone who has experience doing that job. So, I think a program that gave youth work experience would be a good thing, and would directly address one of the main causes of youth unemployment. However, I don't know who would pay for such a program, or exactly how it would work in practice.

Apprenticeships are usually based on some form of skill learning. If it enables those who are unemployed to have a skill set that would be useful in a manufacturing sector then I definitely agree with you. It would be great to do.

Apprenticeships are one solution to the high school drop out rate and could help to decrease unemployment rates by giving kids that don't want to sit in class an employable skill. Apprenticeship programs exist already in most areas.

It,couldn't hurt! I don't see why we couldn't have these programs considering they would give people some needed skills.

I think it sounds great! Kids can definitely get a lot out of this even if it's unpaid since like internships chances are they'll get a job offer at the end of it or at least be able to up their salary offer for their next job. Good idea!

Apprenticeship is one of the best things that could happen to our restless young adults. More than 50% of our growing population cannot name 25 or more products made in the US.

Absolutely, apprenticeships are a great way to get people into careers that they enjoy and real-life experience. We need people in all types of careers for the country to work properly.

That would I think be a good start to fixing the problem were in now.

Very interesting question. On the surface it sounds like a great idea, but remember that traditional apprenticeships were unpaid. There would need to be some sort of tax credit or reward to the individual or company providing the training.

But overall I think a policy like this would be great, especially for those who do not desire or cannot afford a higher education.

In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe.

In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training. ” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month.

In the U.S. , they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe”—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed—including growing numbers of recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to offer. Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was not the first time these alienated men and women have made themselves heard.

Last year, British students outraged by proposed tuition increases—at a moment when a college education is no guarantee of prosperity—attacked the Conservative Party’s headquarters in London and pummeled a limousine carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla Bowles. Scuffles with police have repeatedly broken out at student demonstrations across Continental Europe. And last March in Oakland, Calif.

, students protesting tuition hikes walked onto Interstate 880, shutting it down for an hour in both directions. More common is the quiet desperation of a generation in “waithood,” suspended short of fully employed adulthood. At 26, Sandy Brown of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a college graduate and a mother of two who hasn’t worked in seven months.

“I used to be a manager at a Duane Reade drugstore in Manhattan, but they laid me off. I’ve looked for work everywhere and I can’t find nothing,” she says. “It’s like I got my diploma for nothing.

”.

And America will not consider a similar opportunity for our youth. I think.

Hoorah, its Apprenticeship Week (6th – 10th February, 2012), hands up all those young people who want to do an apprenticeship. Hands up all the small to medium sized businesses who want to take on an apprentice! As one of Margaret Thatcher’s YTS (Youth Training Scheme) successes, I am a great believer in apprenticeships and will always promote them wherever I can.

In one of my roles as an Apprentice Support Consultant, I found it astonishing (and extremely disappointing) at the number of young people who were applying for an apprenticeship role, via the National Apprenticeship website, but turned up for the pre-interview having no idea what an apprenticeship was! Having to witness this time and time again, I made it my responsibility to invite all appropriate applicants to a group training session to help them understand the mechanics of an apprenticeship and how it could help them now and in the future. Young people left my training having a greater understanding of what an apprenticeship was, but boy, did I open a huge can of ‘employability’ worms when it came to explaining how to apply for one!

It became abundantly clear that not only did the young people have no idea about apprenticeships, they didn’t have a clue about how to put together a CV (being a true reflection of their ‘real’ skills – not one that they had downloaded from the internet), they were reckless in their completion of application forms (thinking that missing out some boxes was totally acceptable) and the most worrying of all is the alarming lack of social and self-promotional skills. Too many young people are failing at interviews (if they ever get that far!) because they have no idea how to promote themselves, identifying transferable skills from their everyday lives that can convince an employer that they are right for the role on offer. So, now the government has again decided to jump on the ‘Apprenticeships are the way forward’ wagon and offer cash incentives to encourage businesses to take on an apprentice (bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15878796).

I agree that Apprenticeships ARE the way forward for young people but what Medway (and the rest of the UK) need to think about is adopting a ‘NEET Prevention’ scheme (Not in Education, Employment or Training) ensuring that young people have all the information on how to apply for apprenticeships and, more importantly, how to apply themselves BEFORE they leave secondary education (prevention rather than cure). Employability Skills needs to be part of the curriculum, not as a stand-alone subject, but included in all lessons as an add-on to what they have learnt in that lesson. If young people are made aware of how crucial everyday skills are, such as working as part of a team, problem solving, confidence building and leadership skills (to name just as few) it could help them gain employment in the future leading to less NEETs and more inspired and motivated young people.

University can be an option, whatever the fees may be. Once this happens, the keenness of employers wanting to take on an apprentice should naturally follow. Why should an employer take on a young person who cannot convince anyone (themselves included) that they are right for the role.

If we have more confident, work ready young people who can easily promote their skills and be honest and realistic about their expectations, they are more likely to be successful in their quest for employment. So, to summarise, YES – Apprenticeships are the way forward, just make sure that all young people and employers know why!

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.

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