The Essential Components:

1. Apprenticeship is a training strategy that combines supervised, structured on-the-job training with theoretical related instruction and is sponsored by employer or labor/management groups that have the ability to hire and train in a working environment.
   
   
2. Apprenticeship is a training strategy that prepares people for skilled employment by conducting training in bona fide, and documented employment settings. The content of training, both on-the-job and in related instruction, is defined and dictated by the needs of the industry. The length of training is determined by the needs of the specific occupation within an industry.
   
   
3. Apprenticeship is a training strategy with requirements that are clearly delineated in Federal and State laws and regulations. The National Apprenticeship Act of 1937 (also known as the Fitzgerald Act) and numerous State laws provide the basis for the operation of formal apprenticeship training programs in the United States. Regulations that implement these laws are in force today. These laws and regulations establish minimum requirements for protecting the welfare of the apprentice, such as the length of training, the type and amount of related instruction, supervision of the apprentice, appropriate ratios of apprentice to journeyman, apprentice qualification and selection, recruitment procedures, wage progression, and safety.
   
   
4. Apprenticeship is a training strategy that by virtue of a legal contract (indenture) leads to a Certificate of Completion and official journeyman status. These credentials have explicit meaning, recognition and respect in the eyes of Federal and State governments, and relevant industries.
   
   
5. Apprenticeship is a training strategy that involves tangible and generally sizable investments on the part of the employer or labor/management program sponsor.
   
   
6. Apprenticeship is a training strategy that pays wages to its participants at least during the on-the-job training phase of their apprenticeship and that increases these wages throughout the training program in accordance with a predefined wage progression scale.
   
   
7. Apprenticeship is a training strategy in which participants learn by working directly under the supervision and tutelage of masters in the craft, trade, or relevant occupational area.
   
   
8. Apprenticeship is a training strategy that involves a written agreement and an implicit social obligation between the program sponsor and the apprentice. The written agreement, which is signed by both the apprentice and the program sponsor and is ratified by government, details the roles and responsibilities of each party. The implicit social obligation gives employers and program sponsors the right to expect to employ the apprentice upon completion of training given the investment in training and gives the apprentice a reasonable right to expect such employment. Labor market conditions guide the size of training programs, which allows each party to maintain his/her side of the obligation.
   

Unless they conform to the essential components described above, apprenticeship is not cooperative education, vocational education, tech prep, two plus two, summer or part-time work experiences or any of the other myriad training strategies that many are promoting as ways to assure adequate workforce preparation. Such strategies undoubtedly may have some value in their own right, but they are not apprenticeship. What distinguishes apprenticeship from most of their other approaches are such fundamental qualities as training program sponsorship and location, the skills required, the value attached to the credential earned, curriculum content that is defined exclusively by the workplace, wage requirements, the written agreement, and the implicit social contact that exists between the program sponsor and their participants. No other training strategy provides for this unique combination of characteristics. When a person completes a registered apprenticeship program, he/she is prepared to go to work as a fully trained, competent journeyman whose skills enable him/her to perform effectively in the workplace. Few, if any, other types of educational programs can make this claim.