Indicator: 40 - Youth in Apprenticeship/Internships

Why This is Important

In Maine, internships and apprenticeship programs prepare youth to enter the workforce with significant skills and at greater-than-entry-level pay and job status. Program finishers have strong advantages in securing living-wage employment and advancement over their less-skilled counterparts seeking entry-level employment. Apprenticeship finishers often enjoy the security and benefits afforded by union membership as well. Such programs help to strengthen economic development efforts throughout the state, especially in high demand, high growth industries such as metal manufacturing, biotechnology and information services.

Where We Stand

Maine is in a particularly good position to meet the mutual needs of employees and employers in a fast-evolving market that requires ever more specialized workers. Maine youth have access to a continuum of career and technical education starting in high school through its applied technology centers, proceeding through the Maine Community College System, and ending in a formal sense in the University of Maine System and other post-secondary institutions. All providers in this continuum offer internships, although such activities are seldom uniform or inclusive of all students. In fact, these institutions typically do not compile data related to the scope of internship experiences.

Apprenticeships, however, are well accounted for in Maine. As of December 2000, Maine had 1,132 registered apprentices (age range: 18-60). Maine Department of Labor data does not account for age demographics, so the percentage of registered apprentices that would be considered youths (ages 18-21) is unknown. However, Maine has a Pre-Apprenticeship Program for youths 16 to 20 years old that had 139 participants. Maine Career Advantage, housed at the Center for Career Development at Southern Maine Community College, facilitates a fast response, flexible, yet demanding internship/ apprenticeship partnership among businesses, the technical colleges and students, and served 312 participants at this level. While not as rigorous or formal as apprenticeships, Maine secondary schools offer Cooperative Education Programs to over 700 students statewide, with some “co-op” placements resulting in internships.

Data Source and Context

The data source for this indicator is the Maine Department of Education. Enrollment data for apprenticeships, especially the participation of Maine’s youth in the Pre-Apprenticeship Program and Maine Career Advantage, is well counted. Participation in “internships” is much more difficult to reckon; as educators in every discipline grow into facilitative instruction (vs. “chalkand- talk” lecturing), the use of internships and other work-based learning activities has served to blur the distinction between work experiences and school experiences. So too have the opportunities provided to middle school and high school students through participation in Tech Prep courses, Jobs for Maine’s Graduates programs, and previously mentioned programs, all of which comprise Maine’s School-To-Work system serving all K-16 students.

Therefore, the very term “internship” has lost much of its distinction in Maine by design (see “The Maine State Plan for Vocational- Technical Education, PY 2001-2005”). Maine has the means to help prepare youth for apprenticeand post-intern-level employment in a variety of ways. Maine’s Learning Results, the state’s new framework for K-12 education, mandates that all students learn and apply career preparation principles and activities throughout their public school experience. The institutionalization of career preparation in the curriculum should, in time, bolster the public’s view of technical careers-and further support for internships and apprenticeships.