< PreviousA PPR E N T I C E S H I PSIllinois builds talent base while learning from European apprenticeship models. by S AVA N N A H K I N GWorld-Class WorkersWorld-Class World-Class 48 I N T E R SE C T I L L I N OI Sver the last few years, companies around the country have lamented the lack of available, job-ready workers. It’s an all-too-common concern that’s only going to continue to grow as baby boomers retire. In Illinois, apprenticeships help bridge the skills gap with community colleges around the state work with industry to create beneficial training programs.Gov. Bruce Rauner made strengthening and growing the state’s apprenticeship opportunities a priority, especially as demand for middle-skill jobs in Illinois increases. These jobs make up the largest part of the state’s job market. By , some percent of job openings in Illinois are expected to be middle-skill level. Nationally, two-thirds of jobs will require some postsecondary training and education by . “I firmly believe that to strengthen Illinois’ economy, we need to attract and retain skilled labor,” Rauner said. “In order to do that, we need to invest more in training and invest in our young people. Illinois has the talent and the innovative ideas that, if cultivated, have the potential to produce great things.”OWorld-Class WorkersWorkersWorkersI N T E R S E C T I L L I N O I S 4950 I N T E R S E C T IL L I N OI STo bolster the state’s programs, Rauner visited the world-renowned vocational school and professional training center, the BBZ Neustadt am Rübenberge, in Germany’s Hannover region in April. For the last 150 years, the school has been training students for the workforce and is a model of the German apprenticeship program with nearly half a million students each year. Rauner toured several of the school’s programs including the Smart Factory Concept and strategic automotive innovation programs, which he plans to incorporate into Illinois’ apprenticeship programs. “We are following the German model. We visited a lot of those schools in Germany in April,” said Mark Peterson, President and CEO of Intersect Illinois. “We brought two community college presidents with us. That is our methodology. We are taking best in class from Germany and implementing those programs in Illinois through our community college system. We are meeting the workforce needs of employers through specialized programs in Illinois.”Apprenticeships are a win-win for businesses and employees. Apprenticeships have been shown to increase employee loyalty and diversity while reducing turnover and recruiting costs. Students benefit from earning a living and learning a trade while they’re still enrolled in school. Illinois expects its apprenticeship programs to grow over the years. Currently, for every four people who leave the trades — for retirement, health or other reasons — only one new person is supplied by apprenticeship programs to enter the trades. Harper College in Palatine, in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, currently offers one of the more innovative apprenticeship models in Illinois. The community college recently shared its apprenticeship success on Capitol Hill with the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, “Our program is the first of its kind in the U.S. insurance industry and therefore has an important role to play in demonstrating the value of apprenticeships in this sector. Our experience in Switzerland has shown us that apprenticeships are a very powerful way of developing core business competencies and inspiring young people to take on new challenges.”— Mike Foley, CEO of North America Commercial and Regional Chairman of North America for Zurich Insurance groupHarper College in Palatine offers several unique apprenticeship programs.Photo courtesy of Harper CollegeI N T E R S E C T I L L I N O I S 51Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. Representatives on the committee stressed the importance of taking proven, successful apprenticeship models — like the one at Harper — to scale nationally. Harper College offers eight apprenticeship programs in a variety of pathways including industrial maintenance, logistics and supply chain, and precision machining. What makes this apprenticeship program unique is that the college also offers several white-collar pathways in banking and finance, cybersecurity, insurance, graphic arts, and sales and retail management. About 100 apprentices are currently enrolled at Harper and more than 30 companies participate in the program. Employers pay their apprentices a salary and their tuition. Each program takes two to three years to complete, and students receive an associate degree and a nationally recognized certification from the Department of Labor that indicates they are fully qualified for their role within their chosen field. In addition to training students, the college provides training instruction for mentors who oversee apprentices at the workplace. In 2015, Zurich Insurance Group partnered with Harper College to develop a training program for its apprentices in the U.S. modeled off Switzerland’s highly successful national apprenticeship program. Two-thirds of students in Swiss schools enroll in vocational training programs that combine higher education with work experience. In 2014, 94 percent of Swiss students who had completed their apprenticeship were hired by the company. The company expects to have the same success with its U.S. apprenticeship program and is committed to having 100 apprentices in the program by 2020. “Our program is the first of its kind in the U.S. insurance industry and therefore has an important role to play in demonstrating the value of apprenticeships in this sector,” Mike Foley, CEO of North America Commercial and Regional Chairman of North America for Zurich Insurance group, said at the time. “Our experience in Switzerland has shown us that apprenticeships are a very powerful way of developing core business competencies and inspiring young people to take on new challenges.” Gov. Rauner tours the BBZ Neustadt in Hannover, Germany.Photo courtesy of the Illinois Governor’s OfficeApprenticeships have been shown to increase employee loyalty and diversity while reducing turnover and recruiting costs.52 I N T E R S E C T IL L I N OI Setween Chicago’s latest expansion of O’Hare International Airport, hundreds of global companies and the fact that the city’s economy is the 17th largest in the world, there is no doubt the Second City is force on the world stage.But the best Illinois window on the world is far from the big city. It’s on college campuses around the state. Illinois ranks No. 5 among the U.S. states with the most foreign students, according to Educational Exchange Data from Open Doors 2017. The number of students increased in 2017 by 3.8 percent, bringing the total number of international students in the state to 52,225. International students come to Illinois from around the world, with 32.5 percent of those students hailing from China, 25.8 H I GH E R E D U C A T I O Nby S AVA N N A H K I N GBAt Home and AbroadStudents from around the world choose to study in Illinois.All photos courtesy Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Office of TourismI N T E R S E C T I L L I N O I S 53percent from India, 6 percent from South Korea, 2.8 percent from Saudi Arabia, and 2.1 percent from Canada. The Brookings Institution reported in 2014 that the greater Chicago area ranked No. 6 among 118 metro areas in the U.S. as a destination for international students. American students in Illinois are also going abroad, with just over 9,000 students enrolled in Illinois institutions learning. The institutions around the globe with the highest number of foreign students is far and away the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with 12,454 students enrolled in the 2016-2017 school year. The university is ranked No. 2 among all public higher education institutions nationally for the number of international students enrolled. University of Illinois has more than 400 collaborative agreements with education institutions in 60 countries. Each of these agreements works in tandem with one of the university’s colleges or departments and seeks to grow the mobility of students, faculty, staff and peers. The university has been a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Student Awards for the seventh time in the last 8 years. The Fulbright award is the U.S. government’s flagship international education exchange program.Northwestern University in Evanston has more than 5,000 international students, with approximately 35 percent of those coming from China. One out of 10 students in the 2020 graduating class at Northwestern is from outside the U.S. According to the university, the top academic programs for undergraduate foreign students include economics, industrial 54 I N T E R S E C T IL L I N OI Sengineering, computer science, journalism, communication, mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemical engineering and political science. On the master’s degree level, foreign students are more focused on engineering and computer science. e University of Chicago in Hyde Park also has a large international student base and enrolls more than , international students from more than countries. American students are also able to take the opportunity to explore other cultures through its study abroad program. Currently, percent of UChicago’s undergrad students participate in the program studying in cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. “ rough their experiences abroad, college students develop new lenses through which to Leading Places of Origin for Foreign Students in Illinois1 China 34.5 %2 India 25.8%3 South Korea 6.0%4 Saudi Arabia 2.8% 5 Canada 2.1%Source: Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange by Institute of International EducationInstitutions with the Highest Number of Foreign Students 1 University of IllinoisUrbana-Champaign 12,4542 Illinois Institute of TechnologyChicago 5,6943 Northwestern UniversityEvanston 5,3634 University of Illinois Chicago 4,6315 University of Chicago 4,215Source: Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange by Institute of International EducationI N T E R S E C T I L L I N O I S 55see and reflect upon not just their academic subjects, but also themselves,” said Sarah Walter, associate dean for international education and director of study abroad. “These opportunities give students a more diverse worldview and broader perspective that help them contribute to solving local and global challenges.”International students bring a wealth of diversity and cultural understanding to college campuses. The opportunities to learn from one another benefit both domestic and foreign students — which in turn benefits their eventual employers. According to the Pew Research Center, of the 13,600 foreign students who studied in the Champaign-Urbana area and worked or sought employment through the U.S. Optional Practical Training (OPT) program between 2004 and 2016, 45 percent stayed in the area. Of the 54,300 foreign students in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area, 68 percent stayed to work in the area they study through the OTP program. “These opportunities give students a more diverse worldview and broader perspective that help them contribute to solving local and global challenges.”— Sarah Walter, Associate Dean for International Education and Director of Study Abroad56 I N T E R S E C T IL L I N O I S orthwestern University graduate David Aronson is becoming one of Chicago’s most recognizable entrepreneurs. Aronson is founder and CEO of Peanut Butter, a three-year-old startup that’s addressing one of the country’s most critical challenges: paying off student loan debt. Peanut Butter helps businesses offer student debt reduction as an employee benefit, thus helping their efforts at recruiting and employee retention.Launched from the famed Chicago startup incubator, , Peanut Butter snagged first place last year in a startup competition hosted by and BMO Harris Bank. It’s been recognized as one of Chicago’s “Coolest Companies,” and among other plaudits, placed fourth in Tech.co’s Startup of the Year competition. Peanut Butter has raised $ . million EN T R E P R EN EU R S H I PA conversation with the founder of Peanut Butterby G A R Y D A U G H T E R SaChicagoStartupfrom investors including founder Howard Tullman’s G T V fund and Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.Aronson spoke to this magazine about his startup’s success and about the entrepreneurial climate in Chicago.Why the name Peanut Butter?DAVID ARONSON: It was the only thing I could afford to eat when I was in college.Given student loan burdens, a lot of young workers are eating peanut butter, too.ARONSON: It’s funny. The name was kind of a joke when we first started, but for lack of a better term it ‘stuck around.’ Employers look at it and they say, ‘Hey, I get it.’ It shows empathy to team members who are overcoming a financial challenge.How does it work?ARONSON: It’s really simple. When employers are interested in differentiating their company in the market for talent or when they’re interested in keeping people longer, they come to us and we set up their student loan assistance plan. It has two parts. Employees gain access to student loan resources, which helps them make better decisions about how to manage their student loans. And the second part is that most employers choose to contribute toward employee student loans through a student loan repayment plan. We administer the setup of the benefit, enrollment, and then every month we collect the employer’s contribution and send it to the loan servicer. The net result is that the employee gets out of debt much faster than they would on their own.NNI N T E R S E C T I L L I N O I S 57Why would a company engage peanut butter rather than just pay down employees’ student debt on its own?ARONSON: A lot of employers don’t want to deal with all the administrative aspects of communicating a new benefit, verifying that employees’ loans are actually their loans, and that they’re actually student loans. They don’t want to deal with storing all that confidential, personal information about the employees’ loans. And they don’t want to deal with having to send out all the payments and manage the remittance process and the communication back to the employee. We are an administrative services partner that makes it simple for the company, so that they can start doing this today rather than having to hire staff, build systems and figure out all the best practices and build the relationships with loan servicers that we already have in place.Let’s say I’m a business owner. I have 20-thousand dollars to invest either in a millennial-friendly rehab of my office space or in paying down my employees’ student debt. Can you make the case for going with Peanut Butter?ARONSON: I can. But I’ll point you to a study that was conducted by FC Consulting called ‘ e Millennial Bene t Preferences Study.’ It found among other things that college educated millennials speci cally would value contributions to their student loans seven times more than gym memberships and eleven times more than upgrades to the workplace. So basically, your -thousand dollar investment in paying down the loan is, in the eyes of your millennials, the equivalent of a -thousand dollar investment in o ce upgrades.How many debt-saddled former students are benefitting from Peanut Butter right now.ARONSON: Thousands.How many thousands?ARONSON: Several. We’re working with companies today across the United States and into Canada. Publicly-traded companies like Bridgepoint Education and BioTelemetry and private equity-backed rms like Calabrio, which is part of KKR. Uniquely, as a bene t administrator, we’re fortunate to have been trusted by leading human capital management companies like Ceridian, which is one of the largest payroll providers in the world.What are the best indicators of the company’s success right now?ARONSON: e ability to hire faster and to retain talent longer. Rise Interactive was already an Ad Age ‘Best Place to Work’ when their chief operating o cer said that student loan assistance has been a boon to their recruiting e orts. He said it’s put them on the map in terms of bene ts. On the other end of the spectrum, when it comes to retaining talent longer, we’ve been fortunate to work with one of the top sta ng rms in the country, a company called Medix. e vice president of people at Medix says they’ve seen virtually no turnover among the participants in their student loan assistance program. indicators of the company’s success right now? e ability to hire faster and to retain talent longer. Rise Interactive was already an Ad Age ‘Best Place to Work’ when their chief operating o cer said that student loan assistance has been a boon to their recruiting e orts. He said it’s put them on the map in terms of bene ts. On the other end of the spectrum, when it comes to retaining talent longer, we’ve been fortunate to work with one of the top sta ng rms in the country, a company called Medix. e vice president of Next >