Apprentice program partnerships involving AON, Allstate, City Colleges of Chicago and the One Million Degrees program have shown promising results in one of the top states for student economic outcomes.
Photo by mmac72: Getty Images
It can be difficult to align post-secondary education goals with the goals of employers who — despite the growing array of certificates, degrees and other credentials — are still having a hard time filling high-skill, high-wage roles. For students who may have affordability and other challenges, the question is even more direct: Is it worth it for me to even pursue post-secondary education?
If only there were scorecards that helped both sides. As it happens, two reports from 2024 and two sessions I experienced at the ECMC Foundation’s CTE Leadership Collaborative Convening shed light on paths forward for career pathways.
The first report made its debut in April 2024 when Strada Education Foundation published the State Opportunity Index, which “establishes a baseline for how states are doing in five priority areas: Clear Outcomes, Quality Coaching, Affordability, Work-Based Learning, and Employer Alignment,” said the Foundation. “Taken together, these five priorities provide a research-driven framework for improving the policies and practices to support educators, students and employers.”
The Strada report’s findings were among several factors that comprised the 2025 Regional Workforce Development Rankings published by Site Selection in our January 2025 issue. The Index categorizes state progress in each of the five areas as Leading, Advanced, Developing or Foundational. In addition to the five priority areas, the Index also includes a return on investment (ROI) calculation for each state that employers will find as compelling as state policymakers do. “ROI is determined by calculating the percentage of the graduates who would likely experience a positive return on their investment based on the income distribution for recent college graduates in the state,” the report explains. “A positive ROI value indicates that graduates in that state earn wages higher than the wages earned by those who do not have an education beyond high school, and that the earnings premium they experience over a 10-year period is greater than their total investment in education after high school.”
Here are the top 10 states (including non-state No. 1 D.C.) for overall ROI:
Top 10 States by Overall ROI
| State | ROI Overall | ROI Bachelor’s | ROI Associate |
| Washington, D.C. | 83% | 86% | NA |
| California | 78% | 81% | 65% |
| New York | 78% | 82% | 61% |
| Delaware | 76% | 78% | 73% |
| Arizona | 75% | 78% | 67% |
| Illinois | 75% | 77% | 64% |
| Maryland | 75% | 78% | 63% |
| New Jersey | 75% | 77% | 65% |
| Texas | 74% | 77% | 63% |
| Washington | 74% | 78% | 61% |
Source: Strada
Among the five priority areas addressed in the report, employer alignment and work-based learning are the most open to more positive, proactive influence from employers through training partnerships, internships and apprenticeships. In a September 2024 interview session with officials from the One Million Degrees (OMD) program at Harold Washington College, part of the City Colleges of Chicago system, I heard paid internship program leaders at Aon and Allstate endorse the absolute merits of such programs in one of the Strada report’s top ROI states.
One Million Degrees Happen One Degree at a Time
“One Million Degrees accelerates community college students’ progress on career pathways to economic mobility,” said Samantha Kyrkostas Mills, executive director of development for the program that offers stipends for students entering community college and serves 2,400 students in Chicagoland. “We have two north stars: completion and a good job,” she said. “I often hear, ‘I came to One Million Degrees because of the money but I stayed because of the community.”
A randomized controlled trial with the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab showed that OMD students were 94% more likely to persist from fall to spring semesters and 73% more likely to earn a degree. Moreover, there was a $42 million aggregate annual increase in lifetime earnings per 1,000 students and a $3,000 per student economic return for City Colleges through increased tuition.
“We were one of the original employer partners who invested and wanted community college students as a pipeline,” said Ben Scherr, senior career advancement coordinator for Allstate of the company’s program that includes tracks in insurance, HR and IT and supports sites in Chicago and suburban Lincolnshire as well as other sites across the country. “There are no degree requirements. It is a two-year program. After that, they are guaranteed a position at Aon, which is huge. They are also not required to go on to their 4-year degree to move up in the organization. Compensation is reevaluated every six months.” The program started with 25 apprentices and now has 60, part of 147 apprentices that have moved through multiple OMD cohorts at both companies. The Allstate program’s 2022 cohort overshot OMD’s goal of 80% degree completion by achieving 100% instead.
Aon’s program also is national in scope, said Jazmine Santos, the company’s senior career advancement coordinator. “OMD is supporting students across the nation,” she said. Like Allstate’s, the program is for up to 24 months. “If they complete their degree earlier,” she said, “then they are eligible to move into their full-time position.”
What’s it pay? At Aon, explained Erika Ehmann, director of workforce programs at One Million Degrees, apprentices start off as salaried employees or hourly, and are also eligible for benefits. “Some start at $42,000 a year. One they graduate, they will go from a leel 8 role and can be eligible for level 7, and that can increase their salary by upwards of $20,000 to $40,000. This is the gold standard. We are requiring partners to enter in a partnership and pay our scholars a living wage. The MIT calculator says will be $24.50 for our scholars. And it will go up. There is an employer rubric we use, and that is non-negotiable with our partners.”
As for day-to-day work, Scherr said there are three key strategies for monitoring and supporting apprentices.
“The first one happens during orientation for the first six weeks — cultural humility. I’m curious about who you are and understanding your ‘why’ right away. There is the campus to corporate transfer, realizing you’re not being graded on everything you do — anti-excellence, pro-participation. And just like OMD, I encourage the apprentices to create their own personal board of directors and advisors. Those three things really build on the success.”
So do more fundamental things related to daily struggles and an opportunity to put corporate values into action.
“The beliefs and values of Allstate and OMD are similar,” said Scherr, observing how grants “really help keep our apprentices in school and in their jobs, from starting out in their first couple weeks, having car or child care issues, living in hotels, choosing groceries over 3-credit classes. They don’t have to make that decision anymore. If we can’t provide the resource ourselves, we’re working with our different partners to make sure they know about it, so those barriers aren’t barriers.”
Asked what skills they’d observed to be most critical for apprentices to develop, Aon’s Jazmine Santos said enthusiasm and a growth mindset.
The ultimate takeaway? “This works,” said Scherr. “One Million Degrees works. We’ve had a 75% conversion rate for roles that typically went for bachelor’s degree or above. Ask those apprentices and they’d say they would never have had their resumes looked at … pay-wise, it’s a different tax bracket. So the economic mobility and pathway is there for sure.”
Misalignment and Missed Opportunities Abound — But Some Miss Less Than Others
Nothing sustains growth like an abundance of high-paying jobs. From what the data say, nothing qualifies for those jobs better than a sustained base of middle skills.
What exactly are middle skills? Middle skills workers “provide essential medical and public services, build and maintain critical infrastructure, and help run key business operations, among other vital societal functions,” says the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), a research and policy institute within Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the links between education, career qualifications and workforce demands. The institute in September released “Missed Opportunities: Credential Shortages in Programs Aligned with High-Paying Middle-Skills Jobs in 55 U.S. Metro Areas.”
The research, supported by JPMorganChase, compares current credential production with the projected number of job openings for workers holding these credentials through 2032. High-paying middle-skills occupations are defined as those in which more than half of early-career (ages 18–35) middle-skills workers have a job with annual earnings of more than $53,000. “Early-career middle-skills workers in these jobs not only out-earn most young workers with a bachelor’s degree but also experience considerable earnings growth over time, with median annual earnings that rise to $80,000 by mid-career (ages 36–49),” a CEW release explained. “CEW researchers identified 107 high-paying middle-skills jobs in five occupational groups: blue-collar; health care; management; protective services; and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In total, 349 middle-skills programs provide a pathway to these high-paying jobs.”
“The blue-collar sector will have the greatest nationwide shortage of workers prepared for high-paying middle-skills occupations, with 52 of the 55 largest U.S. metro areas experiencing shortages,” said CEW Director and report co-author Jeff Strohl. “If the current levels of annual credential production in programs aligned with these occupations don’t increase nationally, the credential supply will meet only 13% of the projected annual demand through 2032.” As a result, annual credential production in aligned programs will fall short of annual demand by more than 360,000 credentials, including in such occupations as first-line supervisors in construction and manufacturing; mechanics and operating engineers.
Anticipated shortages are less severe for the other four occupational groups, with health care the only occupational group with a projected nationwide oversupply of credentials.
Oh, The Humanities
The report said three of the 55 regions — Rochester, New York; Orlando, Florida; and San Jose, California — are expected to face a surplus of credentials aligned with high-paying blue-collar occupations. In 40 of the 55 major metro areas, the production of credentials aligned with high-paying STEM occupations exceeds the projected number of job openings for workers with these credentials. However, while production of middle-skills credentials aligned with high-paying STEM occupations exceeds projected demand by 23% in major metro areas overall, “some of the largest STEM hubs in the country — including Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York; and Washington, D.C. — will face credential shortages,” the CEW said. The high-paying STEM occupations projected to have the greatest demand for middle-skills workers through 2032 are software developers, computer systems analysts and industrial engineers.
The September report followed a May 2024 report from Georgetown CEW called “The Great Misalignment: Addressing the Mismatch between the Supply of Certificates and Associate’s Degrees and the Future Demand for Workers in 565 U.S. Labor Markets.” That report found that “in half of local labor markets nationwide, at least 50% of all middle-skills credentials would need to be granted in different fields of study to fully align middle-skills credential production and projected labor demand through 2031.”
One culprit? What some might label as less-than-practical degrees. “One major factor contributing to misalignment is the large proportion of credentials that have little or no direct connection to a specific occupation,” said the CEW in a release. “More than 25% of all middle-skills credentials are granted in programs with no direct occupational match, including programs in liberal arts, general studies, and humanities.”
But the report also points out that some similar-sized markets are less misaligned than others, noting that the level of credentials-to-jobs misalignment is more than 70% higher in Los Angeles than in Atlanta (53% versus 31%). The report highlights the top 10 most aligned labor markets among the 565 commuting zones examined. Four of them are in Georgia:
Commuting Zone
1. Americus, Georgia
2. Manhattan, Kansas
3. Paris, Tennessee
4. Savannah, Georgia
5. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Georgia
6. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pennsylvania
7. Moultrie-Thomasville, Georgia
8. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
9. Alexandria, Minnesota
10. Maysville, Kentucky
Credentials-to-Jobs Misalignment
18.2%
20.1%
20.9%
23%
24.7%
28%
28.3%
28.8%
28.9%
28.9%
In remarks I heard in Chicago in September at the ECMC Foundation’s convening of a number of fellowship programs engaged in career and technical education (CTE), Jeff Strohl said he finds himself thinking about these things when he’s riding his bike at five in the morning. “The promise and peril of CTE,” he said. “It’s all human capital development to me. CTE has been discredited at the very point the nation is relying upon it. There are skills shortages, people thinking college is not worth it. CTE needs a callout.”
Strohl proposed a name change to “occupational preparation.” After all, he said, “Ninety percent of college students are in school to get a job.” He says there need to be better guidance counseling and better transfer policies between 2-year and 4-year institutions. And there needs to be a change in thinking from the linear model of high school to college and appreciation that everyone uses training. “It’s not just young people,” he said, noting that the average age of an apprentice is closer to 30 than to 21.
Jeff Strohl, Director, Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
Asked how data, and therefore effectiveness, could be improved in the CTE ecosystem, Strohl said, “If we were magic, I would get a lot of stuff from the European model, engaging employers in the process … at the political level, hone that business argument for the non-linear model — where we see that people need the reskilling , they are going back to school. Look at it more as people getting it along the life cycle,” rather than the rote sequence of high school, post-secondary and work, he said. “Focus on uplift, the benefits of raising up all the people of our country.”
Watch for more details about these reports and conversations in Workforce 2025, forthcoming from Conway Data in February. See past editions of this annual publication.
While most U.S. markets have a credentials-to-jobs misalignment, metro Atlanta is less misaligned than most.
Photo by Marilyn Nieves: Getty Images
