The next-gen IMT apprenticeship: a return on investment study

An underdeveloped talent supply pipeline has resulted in a skills gap and a skilled labor shortage in the manufacturing sector across the United States. This is potentially the result of a lack of diversity in educational opportunity offered to students, an emphasis on college enrollment rates as a high school performance metric, and the conflation of college and career readiness. The Industrial Manufacturing Technician (IMT) Registered Apprenticeship offers one solution to increase the basic skills of the labor pool in a variety of skilled manufacturing settings such as food processing plants, foundries, plastics manufacturers, and biomedical production facilities. However, some research suggests that cost plays a significant factor in a business's decision to sponsor apprenticeship. To date, very little research regarding cost-benefit analysis or return on investment (ROI) for sponsors of apprenticeship has been conducted in the United States. Therefore, this research studies ROI for sponsors of the IMT Registered Apprenticeship. It uses a mixed methodology consisting of an interview in conjunction with an accounting framework. The study was conducted with six sponsors of Registered Apprenticeship (three businesses and three intermediaries).

Only three of the six sponsors were able to provide the full complement of data required to calculate an ROI, with estimated revenues being the least available data. However, all three of the sponsors that were able to provide all of the requisite data saw a positive ROI during the term of the apprenticeship. This study also recommends three additional areas of research and policy that would assist policymakers and educators to better prepare the workforce: increase empirical research of the benefits and costs of Registered Apprenticeships across all sectors; proliferate the results of that new empirical research, thereby increasing the implementation of Registered Apprenticeships; and increase the involvement of intermediary sponsors, such as labor unions and community colleges, in establishing and maintaining Registered Apprenticeships.

Published abstract. Show less