The Higher Ed Geek Podcast

Episode #223: The Future of Work & Apprenticeships as a Pathway to Prosperity


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Ryan Craig, managing director at Achieve Partners, joins us to discuss the transformative power of apprenticeships in reshaping the American workforce. Through an engaging conversation, Ryan unveils the concept of his recent book, "Apprentice Nation," which advocates for a significant expansion of apprenticeship programs as a solution to the skills and experience gaps plaguing the current job market. Highlighting the historical context and the need for a paradigm shift in education and employment, Ryan presents apprenticeships as a viable and necessary alternative to traditional college education.

Guest Name: Ryan Craig Managing Director at Achieve Partners

Guest Bio: Ryan Craig is a Managing Director at Achieve Partners. Ryan’s commentary on where the puck is going in education and workforce regularly appears in the biweekly Gap Letter, Forbes, and Inside Higher Education. He is the author of A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College (2018), which describes the critical importance of last-mile training and the emergence of bootcamps, income share programs, staffing and apprenticeship models as preferred pathways to good first digital jobs and was named in the Wall Street Journal as one the Books of the Year for 2018. Ryan’s first book was College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education (2015), which profiles the coming shift toward competency-based education and hiring. Ryan is a co-founder of Apprenticeships for America, a national nonprofit dedicated to scaling apprenticeships across the U.S. economy. Previously, Ryan led the Education & Training sector at Warburg Pincus. His prior experience in higher education was at Columbia University. He began his career at McKinsey & Co. Ryan received bachelor's degrees summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University, and his law degree from the Yale Law School.


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