Education
Apprenticeships for high schoolers are touted as the next big thing. One state leads the way
This story is part of Hechinger’s ongoing coverage about rethinking high school. See our articles about a new diploma in Alabama and a “career education for all” model in Kentucky.
ELKHART, Ind. — Ever since Ty Zartman was little, people told him he had to go to college to be successful. “It was engraved on my brain,” he said.
But despite earning straight A’s, qualifying for the National Honor Society, being voted prom king and playing on the high school football and baseball teams, the teen never relished the idea of spending another four years in school. So in fall 2023 he signed up through his Elkhart, Indiana, high school for an apprenticeship at Hoosier Crane Service Company, eager to explore other paths. There, he was excited to meet coworkers who didn’t have a four-year degree but earned good money and were happy in their careers.
Through the youth apprenticeship, Ty started his day at the crane manufacturing and repair business at 6:30 a.m., working in customer service and taking safety and training courses while earning $13 an hour. Then, he spent the afternoon at his school, Jimtown High, in Advanced Placement English and U.S. government classes.
In June, the 18-year-old started full-time at Hoosier Crane as a field technician.
“College is important and I’m not dissing on that,” Ty said. “But it’s not necessarily something that you need.”
Elkhart County is at the forefront of a movement slowly spreading across Indiana and the nation to make apprenticeships a common offering in high school.
In 2019, as part of a plan to boost the region’s economic prospects, county leaders launched an effort to place high schoolers in apprenticeships that combine work-based training with classroom instruction. About 80 students from the county’s seven school districts participated this academic year, in fields such as health care, law, manufacturing, education and engineering. In April, as part of a broader push to revamp high school education and add more work-based learning, the state set a goal of 50,000 high school apprentices by 2034.
Tim Pletcher, the principal of Jimtown High, said students are often drawn first to the chance to spend less time in class. But his students quickly realize apprenticeships give them work-based learning credits and industry connections that help them after graduation. They also earn a paycheck. “It’s really causing us to have a paradigm shift in how we look at getting kids ready for the next step,” he said.
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This “earn and learn” model is taking hold in part because of deepening disillusionment with four-year college, and the fact that well-paying jobs that don’t require bachelor’s degrees are going unfilled nationally. The past three presidential administrations invested in expanding apprenticeships, including those for high schoolers, and in April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for 1 million new apprentices. In a recent poll, more than 80 percent of people said they supported expanding partnerships between schools and businesses to provide work-based learning experiences for students.
Yet in the United States, the number of so-called youth apprenticeships for high schoolers is still “infinitesimally small,” said Vinz Koller, a vice president at nonprofit group Jobs for the Future. One estimate suggests they number about 20,000 nationally, while there are some 17 million high school students. By contrast, in Switzerland — which has been praised widely for its apprenticeship model, including by U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon — 70 percent of high schoolers participate. Indiana is among several states, including Colorado, South Carolina and Washington, that have embraced the model and sent delegations to Switzerland to learn more.
Experts including Ursula Renold, professor of education systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, note that importing the model to the United States at a large scale won’t be simple. Most businesses aren’t accustomed to employing apprentices, parents can be resistant to their students trading four-year college aspirations for work, and public transportation to take students to apprenticeships is limited, especially in rural areas. Many high schoolers don’t have a driver’s license, access to a car or money for gas. School districts already face a shortage of bus drivers that makes transporting students to apprenticeships difficult or impossible.
Still, Renold, who is known as the “grande dame of apprenticeships,” said Indiana’s commitment to apprenticeships at the highest levels of state government, as well as the funding the state has invested in work-based learning, at least $67 million, seem to be setting the state up for success, though it could take a decade to see results.
“If I had to make a bet,” said Renold, “I would say it’s Indiana who will lead the way.”
Related: Apprenticeships are a trending alternative to college, but there’s a hitch
Elkhart County’s experiment with apprenticeships has its roots in the Great Recession. Recreational vehicle manufacturing dominates the local economy, and demand for the vehicles plummeted, contributing to a regional unemployment rate at that time of nearly 20 percent. Soon after, community leaders began discussing how to better insulate themselves from future economic instability, eventually focusing on high school education as a way to diversify industries and keep up with automation, said Brian Wiebe, who in 2012 founded local nonprofit Horizon Education Alliance, or HEA, to help lead that work.
That year, Wiebe and two dozen local and state political, business, nonprofit and education leaders visited Switzerland and Germany to learn more about the apprenticeship model. “We realized in the U.S., there was only a Plan A, a path to college,” he recalled. “We were not supporting the rest of our young people because there was no Plan B.”
HEA partnered with Elkhart County school districts and businesses, as well as with CareerWise, a youth apprenticeship nonprofit that works nationally. They began rolling out apprenticeships in 2019, eventually settling on a goal of increasing participation by 20 percent each year.
In 2021, Katie Jenner, the new secretary of education for Indiana, learned about Elkhart’s apprenticeships as she was trying to revamp high school education in the state so it better prepared students for the workforce. Elkhart, as well as six other apprenticeship pilot sites funded by Indianapolis-based philanthropy the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, provided a proof of concept for the apprenticeship model, said Jenner.
In December, the state adopted a new diploma system that includes an emphasis on experiential and work-based learning, through apprenticeships, internships and summer jobs.
Related: Schools push career ed classes ‘for all,’ even kids heading to college
On a weekday this winter, 17 sophomores at Elkhart’s Concord High School were sitting at computers, creating resumes they planned to use to apply for apprenticeships. The students were among some 50 sophomores at the high school who’d expressed interest in apprenticing and met the school’s attendance and minimum 2.5 GPA requirements, out of a class of roughly 400. They would receive coaching and participate in mock interviews before meeting with employers.
Becca Roberts, a former English teacher who now oversees the high school’s college and career programs, said apprenticeships help convince students of the importance of habits like punctuality, clear communication and regular attendance. “It’s not from a book,” she said. “They’re dealing with real life.”
One student, Ava Cripe, said she hoped for an apprenticeship of some sort in the health care field. She’d only been a pet sitter and was nervous at the thought of having a professional job. “You’re actually going out and working for someone else, like not for your parents or your grandma, so it’s a little scary,” she said.
CareerWise Elkhart has recently beefed up its support for students and businesses participating in apprenticeships. It employs a business partnership manager and customer success managers who help smooth over issues that arise in the workplace — an apprentice who isn’t taking initiative, for example, or an apprenticeship that isn’t sufficiently challenging. “Before, if an issue came up, a business would just fire a student or a student would leave,” said Sarah Koontz, director of CareerWise Elkhart County. “We’re now more proactive.”
In Elkhart and across the state, the embrace of work-based learning has worried some parents who fear it will limit, not expand, their children’s opportunities. In previous generations, career and technical programs (then known as vocational education) were often used to route low-income and Black and Hispanic students away from college and into relatively low-paying career paths.
Anitra Zartman, Ty’s mother, said she and her husband were initially worried when their son said he wanted to go straight to work. They both graduated from college, and her husband holds a master’s degree. “We were like, ‘Don’t waste your talent. You’re smart, go to college.’” But she says they came around after seeing how the work experience influenced him. “His maturity has definitely changed. I think it’s because he has a responsibility that he takes very seriously,” she said. “He doesn’t want to let people down.”
Her eldest daughter, Senica Zartman, also apprenticed during her final two years of high school, as a teacher’s assistant. She is now in college studying education. “The apprenticeship solidified her choice,” Anitra Zartman said, and it helped her decide to work with elementary students. Anitra Zartman said she would encourage her two youngest children to participate in apprenticeships too.
Sarah Metzler, CEO of the nonprofit HEA, said apprenticeships differ from the vocational education of the past that tended only to prepare students for relatively low paid, entry-level jobs. With apprenticeships, she said, students must continually learn new skills and earn new licenses and industry certifications as part of the program.
Litzy Henriquez Monchez, 17, apprentices in human resources at a company of 50 people, earning $13.50 an hour. “I deal with payroll, I onboard new employees, I do a lot of translating. Anything that has to do with any of the employees, I deal with,” she said. She’s also earning an industry-recognized certification for her knowledge of a human resources management system, and says the company has offered to pay for her college tuition if she continues in the position.
Koontz said most companies pay for their apprentices to attend Ivy Tech, a statewide community college system, if they continue to work there. One is even paying for their apprentice’s four-year degree, she said.
Related: ‘Golden ticket to job security’: Trade union partnerships hold promise for high school students
Attracting employers has proven to be the biggest challenge to expanding youth apprenticeships — in Elkhart and beyond. In total, 20 companies worked with the Elkhart school districts last year, and 28 have signed on for this coming school year — only enough to employ about a third of interested students.
The obstacles, employers say, include the expense of apprentices’ salaries, training and other costs.
Metzler and others, though, point to studies showing benefits for employers, including cost savings over time and improved employee loyalty. And in Indiana, the Fairbanks foundation and other organizations are working on ways to reduce employer costs, including by developing a standard curriculum for apprenticeships in industries like health care and banking so individual companies don’t bear the costs alone.
Business leaders who do sign on say they are happy with the experience. Todd Cook, the CEO of Hoosier Crane Service Company, employs 10 high schoolers, including Ty Zartman, as engineering and industrial maintenance technician apprentices, approximately 10 percent of his staff. He said the pipeline created by the apprenticeship program has helped reduce recruiting costs.
“We’re starting to build our own farm system of talent,” he said. Students initially earn $13 an hour, and finish their apprenticeship earning $18. If they continue with the company, he said, they can earn up to $50 an hour after about five years. And if they go on to become trainers or mentors, Cook said, “Honestly, there is no ceiling.”
Related: A new kind of high school diploma trades chemistry for carpentry
Transportation has been a limiting factor too. There’s no public transit system, and students who can’t rely on their parents for rides are often out of luck. “We’d love to offer a bus to every kid, to every location, but we don’t have people to run those extra bus routes,” said Principal Pletcher.
The state has tried to help by investing $10 million to help students pay for costs such as transportation, equipment and certifications. Each school that provides work-based learning opportunities also receives an additional $500 per student.
Trump’s executive order called for the secretaries of education, labor and commerce to develop a plan by late August for adding 1 million new apprenticeships. The order does not set a date for reaching that milestone, and it applies to apprentices of all ages, not just high schoolers. Vinz Koller of Jobs for the Future said the goal is modest, and achievable; the number of youth apprenticeships has doubled just in the past few years, he said, and California alone has a goal of reaching 500,000 apprenticeships, across all ages, by 2029.
Still, the order did not include additional funding for apprenticeships, and the Trump administration’s proposed budget includes major cuts to workforce development training. In an email, a White House spokesperson said the administration had promoted apprenticeships through outreach programs but did not provide additional information including on whether that outreach had a focus on youth apprenticeships.
Back in Elkhart, Ty Zartman, the Hoosier Crane apprentice, has begun his technician job with the company after graduating in early June. He is earning $19 an hour. He is also taking a class at the local community college on electrical work and recently received a certificate of completion from the Department of Labor for completing 2,000 hours of his apprenticeship.
Anitra Zartman said she wishes he’d attended more school events like pep rallies, and sometimes worried he wasn’t “being a kid.” But Ty said his supervisor is “super flexible” and he was able to go to the winter formal and prom. “I think I still live a kid life,” he said. “I do a lot of fun things.”
Of his job, he said, “I love it so much.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
This story about high school apprenticeships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Five years ago, Traya Health, a holistic hair loss solution, was born out of a deeply personal health struggle faced by co-founder Saloni Anand and her husband. What began as a quest for personal well-being has blossomed into a pioneering brand that challenges conventional wisdom in the hair care industry. Saloni shared Traya’s science-first approach in a session at the ETBrandEquity Brand World Summit 2025.
The genesis of a solution
Saloni Anand, co-founder of Traya, recounted the origins of the brand. Her co-founder, armed with a biomedical chemistry background, embarked on extensive research to address his uncontrollable hypothyroidism. During this challenging journey, a surprising side effect emerged: his hair began to grow back.
“About two years later, we realised that this is something awesome, and everything out there in the industry is not able to grow hair, but we could, so there’s some potential to explore this,” Anand shared. This discovery spurred intensive research into hair science, revealing critical insights that would become the bedrock of Traya’s unique approach.
Dispelling hair loss myths: Traya’s foundational learnings
Traya’s deep dive into hair science led to three fundamental revelations that shaped their model:
Diagnosis is key: “We learned hair loss is genetic mostly, but has multiple types. Not everyone has hair loss because medically multiple types of it require diagnosis.”
Follicle potential: Hair regrowth is possible if follicles are still present, meaning it’s achievable for most individuals not in very advanced stages of hair loss.
No magic bullet: “There is no magic molecule for one product that can grow everyone’s hair. It’s a wider thing that’s happening. It’s more like diabetes than anything.”
Analysing the existing hair industry, Anand observed, “More than 10,000 products on Amazon today sell with the label of hair fall and are topical. Selling you a shampoo, conditioner that has wrongful claims, promising 30-day results, sometimes even worse.” This landscape, rife with superficial solutions, solidified Traya’s mission: “We are here to grow hair, and we will do everything it takes to get that emphasis.”
The “three sciences” model: Traya’s holistic prescription
The first year was dedicated solely to building formulations. This led to Traya’s distinctive model: a hair solution built on diagnosis and a holistic approach. The brand name, “Traya,” is Sanskrit for “three sciences,” embodying their core philosophy: Ayurveda, Allopathy (Dermatology) and Nutrition.
The consumer journey begins with an online diagnosis. The solution provided is a customised kit incorporating elements from all three sciences, including a diet plan, recognising that hair loss often stems from internal imbalances.
Initial skepticism from investors was high. Saloni and her husband launched Traya with personal funds. Six months later, with tangible results from their first critical trials, they secured their initial investment.
Breaking the rules: A D2C brand of the future
Traya today stands as a largely scaled, profitable brand, having served over 10 lakh Indians. A distinctive aspect of its D2C model is that 100 per cent of its revenue comes directly from its platform. “If you download the Traya app, take a long diagnosis. They buy a gift. If the consumer cannot choose which product they are buying. We tell them what they should buy,” Anand stated, emphasising their doctor-led, personalised approach.
Eighty per cent of Traya’s revenue comes from repeat customers. “This happened because we did not have the baggage of how,” she noted.
Education, retention and AI: The pillars of growth
Anand highlighted three critical pillars for modern D2C success:
Believe in education: Traya faced the challenge of educating consumers on why previous topical solutions had failed and why a holistic, science-backed approach was necessary. “Our journey from zero to one crore per month is really smooth. We really had to build these fundamentals,” she revealed. This rapid scale was driven by a deep commitment to educating their audience. Traya’s culture prohibits discussing competitor brands, focusing solely on their consumers. “The moment you do that and you just focus on your consumer, you have the ability to do something,” she added.
Retention over acquisition: Traya defines itself internally as a “habit building organisation,” treating hair loss as a chronic disease. Their North Star metric is retention, supported by a data-tech engine and over 800 hair coaches who ensure adherence and usage. “Back in 2023, when we were having that growth chart, we reached a point where we saw retention numbers there, and we cautiously stopped all our marketing scale up,” Anand disclosed. This move underscored their commitment to long-term customer success over short-term acquisition. “How can you be a D2C brand in 2025? That’s not too little but is just too little today to differentiate. Can you add a service there? Can you add a community? How can you be more than just a product gone?”
Embrace AI: While acknowledging AI as a buzzword, Anand firmly believes it will be a pivotal theme in brand building. Traya, despite its 800-person team, has already seen impressive results from integrating AI. “Three months ago, I took a mandate at Traya that no more tech hiring, and we are about since then, we have done zero tech hiring, and we’ve increased the tech productivity four times,” she shared, emphasising the transformative power of AI in consumer evaluation, discovery and shopping.
Saloni Anand concluded by summarising her key takeaways for aspiring D2C brands: “Think more than product solutions. Think of efficiency. Think science, if your product works, everything else will fall in place. Think AI. Think of the review word and think of retention first.”
Ministers are facing calls to not cut education plans for children and young people with special needs and disabilities (Send).
Campaigners say education, health and care plans (EHCPs) are “precious legal protections”, warning that thousands of children could lose access to education if the plans are abolished.
The government has said it inherited the current system “left on its knees”. Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson described it as a “complex and sensitive area” when asked if she could rule out scrapping EHCPs.
But Neil O’Brien, the shadow education minister, has criticised the government for “broken promises and U-turns”.
An EHCP is a legally binding document which ensures a child or young person with special or educational needs gets the right support from a local authority.
Full details of the proposed changes are due in October, but ministers have not ruled out scrapping the education plans, insisting no decisions have been taken.
In a letter to the Guardian newspaper, campaigners have said that without the documents in mainstream schools, “many thousands of children risk being denied vital provision, or losing access to education altogether”.
“Whatever the Send system’s problems, the answer is not to remove the rights of children and young people. Families cannot afford to lose these precious legal protections,” they added.
Signatories to the letter include the heads of charities, professors, Send parents including actor Sally Phillips, and campaigners including broadcaster Chris Packham.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Ms Phillipson saidL
“What I can say very clearly is that we will strengthen and put in place better support for children.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to parents, to disability rights groups, to campaigners and to others and to colleagues across Parliament as well, because it’s important to get this right,” she added, but said it is “tough”.
Mr O’Brien, the shadow minister, said the government had “no credibility left”.
“This is a government defined by broken promises and u-turns. They said they would employ more teachers and they have fewer. They said they would not raise tax on working people but did,” Mr O’Brien said.
Data from the Department for Education released in June showed that the number of EHCPs has increased.
In total, there were 638,745 EHCPs in place in January 2025, up 10.8% on the same point last year.
The number of new plans which started during 2024 also grew by 15.8% on the previous year, to 97,747.
Requests for children to be assessed for EHCPs rose by 11.8% to 154,489 in 2023.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have been clear that there are no plans to abolish Send tribunals, or to remove funding or support from children, families and schools.”
The spokesperson added that it would be “totally inaccurate to suggest that children, families and schools might experience any loss of funding or support”.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is bringing a fresh wave of innovation to South Korea’s public education sector. big tech companies are actively developing AI-based solutions for public education and forming partnerships with schools alongside edtech startups.
According to the information technology (IT) industry on Sunday, Naver launched a digital public education support system called Whale UBT in April 2025 and integrated it into the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education’s teaching-learning platform, Gwangju AI-ON. Naver also plans to expand adoption to other regional education offices
Whale UBT allows for the unified management of various test items – including diagnostic and unit assessments – within a single platform. A database of about 400,000 questions provided by four educational publishers is available, enabling teachers to create customized tests based on students’ levels.
It also features automatic grading.
To date, AI education platforms were adopted more rapidly in private education, where entry requirements are comparatively less restrictive. The use of AI tools in public education was initially determined by individual teachers; however, their implementation has been rapidly increasing at both the school and district levels.
This trend is driven in part by the increasing sophistication of AI solutions. These tools now go beyond simply marking answers right or wrong – they can analyze step-by-step processes for descriptive questions, improving both convenience and educational outcomes.
A good example is edtech startup Turing Co.’s math learning platform, Math King. Turing signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Association of Future Education Study in February 2025 to promote adoption of Math King in Korean schools.
Math King can generate personalized problem sets for each student in just one second, and AI analyzes even the descriptive answers in homework assignments. The system automatically generates consultation reports that can be sent to parents and includes recommendations for future learning directions.
“We are using Math King for advanced classes, and it has eliminated the hassle of creating customized math problems,” Gyeonggu High School teacher Park Jun-hyung said. ‘I can now manage nearly twice as many students.”
AI solutions also help with administrative tasks, significantly reducing teachers’ workloads, particularly for writing student records.
While many teachers have already been using tools like ChatGPT informally for record writing, new, more convenient solutions are now being developed. These specialized AI tools offer stronger security than ChatGPT.
Edtech startup Elements launched inline AI in April, a solution specifically designed to assist with student record writing. It employs a local Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system, ensuring that data is not sent externally. The AI updates student records automatically based on data from teachers and students.
Given the rapid growth of the AI education market, adoption in public education is expected to accelerate even further. According to market research firm Straits Research, the global AI education market is projected to grow from $4.43 billion in 2024 to $72.45 billion in 2033.
By Ahn Sun-je and Lee Eun-joo
[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]
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