Providing More Americans with Affordable Access to Education and Job Training Opportunities to Help Grow the Middle Class

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Category: National News

Washington, D-C - Education and job training are among the surest pathways to the middle class. To mark the beginning of the school year, the President, the First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, and Secretary Arne Duncan will travel across the country in the coming days to highlight the need for affordable, quality career and education choices for students and to discuss some of the many ways the Administration is working to provide all Americans with the skills and knowledge they need to acquire good-paying jobs and grow the economy.

Today, at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, the President will announce new steps to expand apprenticeships and to continue to build momentum nationwide to make community college free for responsible students. Specifically, the President will announce:

The President is returning to Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, where in 2009 he first launched an effort to encourage more community college graduates and invest in community college programs that meet local needs. Macomb Community College is one of the winning American Apprenticeship grantees announced today. Macomb, a member of the Investing in Manufacturing Community Partnership, has a successful track record of apprenticeship in manufacturing, partnering with over 300 companies and with 160 apprentices in training, and is looking to expand both the number of apprentices it trains in manufacturing and to grow into new IT occupations, including health care IT. Their success in expanding opportunity to more students mirrors what’s happening at institutions across the nation. Macomb also participates in Kalamazoo Promise, through which anonymous donors pay up to 100 percent of tuition at any of Michigan's state colleges or universities for graduates of the public high schools of Kalamazoo.  Roughly 5,000 students have benefited over the past eight years.  Kalamazoo’s success has inspired a dozen cities across Michigan from Detroit to Battle Creek to launch similar scholarships for their local public school students. 

American Apprenticeship Grants

The President is committed to creating more opportunities for hard-working Americans to get ahead by advancing job-driven training initiatives that help American workers acquire the skills they need to succeed in good jobs that are available now. Hands-on apprenticeships, where workers earn and learn at the same time, are a proven path to good, secure middle class jobs. In fact, 87 percent of apprentices are employed after completing their programs, with an average starting wage above $50,000. And the return on investment for employers is impressive – studies from across the globe suggest that for every dollar spent on apprenticeship, employers get an average of $1.47 back in increased productivity, reduced waste, and greater front-line innovation.

The $175 million in American Apprenticeship Grants that the President is announcing today will help train and hire more than 34,000 new apprentices in high-growth and high-tech industries as diverse as health care, IT, and advanced manufacturing while scaling up proven programs in construction, transportation, and energy over the next five years.

American Apprenticeship Grants will help expand apprenticeships into growing industries while also aligning apprenticeship with pathways for further learning and career advancement, scaling apprenticeship models that work, and providing access to apprenticeship for all of America’s talent. For example:

To learn more about the efforts of all 46 winning American Apprenticeship grantees, click HERE.

The American Apprenticeship Grants build on tremendous progress underway. Since the President’s call to action in his State of the Union 2014, the United States has added more than 55,000 new apprenticeship opportunities, the largest increase in nearly a decade. And action from employers, colleges, labor, states, and local governments are building on that momentum.

In addition, yesterday, the White House and the Department of Labor also released a Progress Update on Job Driven Training and Apprenticeships, detailing the success of the Administration’s jobs-driven training efforts, which have directed more than $1.2 billion in competitive grants and $8 billion in non-competitive formula funding for training investments into job-driven strategies. As the report details, following the Vice President’s Job-Driven Training review last year, federal agencies have taken actions to make programs serving over 21 million  Americans every year more effective and accountable for matching and training Americans into good jobs that employers need to fill.

The success of these job-driven training efforts proves just what we can accomplish when we invest in the proven models that build the skills required for workers to succeed and access the middle class. In his FY 2016 Budget, the President increased funding for job training and employment services, and called for Congress to invest $100 million in competitive grants to strengthen state and industry apprenticeships and to create a $2 billion Apprenticeship Training Fund to help double the number of apprentices in America.

In contrast, the Senate and House budget bills fail to support the bipartisan Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the most significant reform to our national workforce system in nearly 20 years, which last year passed the Senate 97 to 3.  The Senate funds the core WIOA and Wagner-Peyser employment and training programs at $650 million less than the President’s Budget, while the House bill reduces the funding by nearly $500 million, harming our ability to compete and removing opportunities for workers to gain the skills they need to move into the middle class.

Under the Republican bills, next year 2 million fewer workers would receive job training and help getting back to work, as compared to the President’s Budget. The Senate bill, in particular, slashes funding for emergency grants to help workers whose jobs are lost as a result of mass layoffs and natural disasters, providing only $74 million for program year 2016 – $167 million (69 percent) less than the President’s Budget.

America’s College Promise

Nearly a century ago, a movement that made high school widely available helped lead to rapid growth in the educational attainment of Americans, driving decades of economic growth and prosperity.  America thrived in the 20th century in large part because we had the most educated workforce in the world.  But other nations have matched or exceeded our success.  Now, more than ever, Americans need more knowledge and skills to meet the demands of a growing global economy without having to take on decades of debt before they even embark on their careers.

Today, the President will announce the following Administration and independent actions, building on the America’s College Promise proposal he announced in January 2015 to make two years of community college free for responsible students, letting students earn the first half of a bachelor’s degree and earn skills needed in the workforce at no cost:

The creation of the independent College Promise Advisory Board: Chaired by Dr. Jill Biden, Vice-Chaired by former Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer and directed by former Under Secretary of Education, Martha Kanter, the board will bring together luminaries and leaders, share best practices and ideas for models to make community college free, and serve as a way for those leaders to recruit more of their peers to join the cause. Board members include:

 

America’s College Promise and the campaign throughout the country to deliver two years of free community college to hard working students are part of the President’s continuing record of success to make college more affordable. The President has doubled investments in college scholarships by expanding Pell Grants and American Opportunity Tax Credit; made student loans more affordable by cutting interest rates and allowing borrowers to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income; and is promoting innovation and competition to bring down costs and improve college quality.