Building Blocks for Better Jobs

The startling transformation underway in the economy, the culture, and public policy.

Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from American Compass’s Learning By Doing collection of case studies in building the infrastructure for career pathways. Read the full collection here.

The ironclad, bipartisan belief in college as the “ticket to the middle class,” in former President Barack Obama’s preferred phrase, that every child should go to college, that the public education system’s primary task is to prepare everyone for college, has begun to crumble.

“For the first time in 50 years, college grads are losing their edge,” the Washington Post reported recently. “The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees—such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters—flipped in 2025, leaving trade workers with a slight edge for six months out of the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time trade workers have had a leg up since the BLS started tracking this data in the 1990s.”

Commenting on the same trend in the Wall Street Journal, Allysia Finley observed, “unemployment among college grads age 22 to 27 rose to 5.6% in December, roughly what it was in February 2009 during the financial panic.”

“The real problem,” she suggested, “is a mismatch between labor supply and demand. Government subsidies and public schools have funneled too many young people to credential mills, which churn out grads who lack the skills that employers demand. Many would be better off training in skilled trades, for which demand is enormous.”

As America awakens to the costs of offshoring and begins the task of reindustrialization, and as the largest technology companies place their bets on an unprecedented expansion of physical infrastructure to support their plans for artificial intelligence, the private sector, too, has discovered that new paths for workforce development are critical to their own success. Unlikely bedfellows from Silicon Valley, Wall Street, school boards, and union halls are coming together in search of new approaches.

On one hand, the solution is straightforward: Stop funneling everyone toward college degrees that they will not complete or use. Start providing exposure to in-demand careers and equipping young people with the skills to enter them. The rest of the world does this already, with better outcomes for young workers than we are achieving here, at much lower cost than we are paying.

On the other hand, that’s all much easier said than done. Politicians have been saying “apprenticeship” for years. But fundamental change is needed in the incentives, priorities, funding, and programs of American high schools, community colleges, employers, unions, and workforce development boards. Dollars have to shift, but so do mindsets. Curriculum needs to be developed, but so does pride in the essential jobs that can allow anyone to contribute productively to their community, support a family, and help move our country forward.

From coast to coast, a quieter story is unfolding. Institutions both public and private, both labor- and management-led, are building a range of “earn-and-learn” pathways that blend training with real work. These models differ in structure and governance, but they share a simple idea: skills are best learned on the job, in partnership with industry, and connected directly to wages and advancement.

These efforts point to something bigger than any single program. They illustrate what might be called opportunity pluralism—the idea that a healthy economy depends not on one dominant route to success, but on many credible pathways that allow people with different talents, timelines, and circumstances to reach good jobs.

Opportunity pluralism rejects the false choice between “college or career.” Instead, it builds a diversified system: employer training, apprenticeships, technical education, early college exposure, and work-based learning all operating side-by-side. The goal is not uniformity, but access—a range of on-ramps that meet young people and mid-career adults at whatever their starting point.

American Compass recently published a report, Learning By Doing: Case Studies in Building the Infrastructure for Career Pathways, that brings these concepts to life. The case studies we compiled are, quite intentionally, not focused on government training programs, which tend to deliver poor results. Developing strong career pathways is not a matter of constructing some new set of institutions from scratch, but rather identifying institutions that are well-positioned to achieve the goal and redirecting their focus—or, in many cases, reprioritizing a focus they once had. Chief among these institutions are: public schools, community colleges, employers, and unions.

The first case study highlights the Fresno Unified School District, which begins career preparation while students are still in high school. Students choose themed pathways—health sciences, construction, manufacturing, and more—take sequenced courses, earn industry certifications, and participate in internships and other work-based learning. By graduation, they leave with not only strong academic grounding, but also tangible labor-market value and professional networks. The system does not ask teenagers to choose between academics and careers; it integrates the two.

The second case study, focused on Texas State Technical College, demonstrates how the formula for public funding shapes a public institution’s understanding of its own purpose, the decisions it makes, and the outcomes it achieves.

Rather than receive taxpayer dollars for delivering hours of classroom instruction, TSTC receives a share of the taxpayer dollars it generates, through the higher earnings of its own graduates. That shift has led to sharper evaluation of program performance, reallocation of resources to departments that are delivering for students, and an institutional culture that prizes concrete results.

Third is Hadrian, an advanced manufacturing firm that hires technicians with no prior experience. Rather than searching for perfect résumés, the company hires for curiosity and work ethic, then invests heavily in structured training on the factory floor.

New employees rotate across stations, learn to read blueprints, master safety and measurement, and receive coaching from dedicated workforce development staff. They are paid a competitive wage from day one. Within a year or so, many move into higher-skilled roles, and some reach six-figure earnings. Training is treated not as a cost, but as a capital investment.

The fourth case study, of Micron Technology’s apprenticeship program, blends employer-led, on-the-job training with learning in a technical classroom through a registered apprenticeship. Apprentices are hired as employees and split their time between paid work in semiconductor fabs and instruction at local community colleges.

They earn a nationally recognized credential and steady wage increases as their skills grow. For career changers and recent graduates alike, it offers a middle ground between college and immediate employment: learning and earning at the same time.

Case study number five tells the story of the electrical training Alliance (etA), which shows how the apprenticeship model can scale. It provides standardized curriculum, instructor development, and modern training tools while leaving delivery to hundreds of local apprenticeship centers tied to union contractors. Tens of thousands of workers move through this system into skilled trades that power construction and infrastructure nationwide. National standards ensure quality; local partnerships ensure direct connection to the labor market.

Finally, in Central and Northern New York, the Building & Construction Trades Council underscores the value of regional coordination. As Micron builds the nation’s largest semiconductor campus, the council connects pre-apprenticeship programs, union training centers, and contractors so that local residents can access those jobs. It functions less like a school and more like an on-ramp—screening candidates, preparing them for jobsite expectations, and linking them directly to employers.

None of these examples is a policy. Nor is any a start-to-finish career pathway on its own. Each illustrates how a well-functioning node would look in a broader system that begins in high school and continues on through post-secondary education and early employment, supported by organizations focused on worker success. They are complementary pieces of a broader opportunity ecosystem.

Together they embody opportunity pluralism in practice: different structures, shared outcomes, and a common commitment to linking learning with work. The question for policymakers is what policies would help the Fresnos, Hadrians, and IBEWs succeed, and ensure that many other schools, businesses, and unions follow in their footsteps.

For policymakers and funders, the lesson is not to standardize on one “best” model. It is to create the conditions that allow many models to flourish: flexible funding for work-based learning, support for apprenticeship expansion, stronger ties between schools and employers, and recognition of industry credentials alongside academic degrees.

Earn-and-learn infrastructure is the connective tissue of a modern opportunity economy. It includes flexible funding streams that reward employment outcomes rather than seat time. It requires shared curriculum frameworks and industry-recognized credentials that travel with workers across employers and regions.

It depends on intermediaries that knit together schools, unions, community colleges, and firms. And it demands governance structures that allow industry and education to operate not as strangers, but as partners.

Just as the nation is investing hundreds of billions in physical infrastructure—from semiconductor fabs to energy grids—we must invest with equal seriousness in the human infrastructure that prepares people to build, operate, and sustain those assets. Physical capital without human capital is idle capacity. Human capital without opportunity is wasted potential.

Policymakers must build earn-and-learn infrastructure, from a general-purpose funding mechanism in which resources follow trainees learning on the job, to standard curriculum and credential frameworks that establish and disseminate best practices, to industry consortia where competitors partner on developing talent that will benefit them all.

Efforts must start earlier, with career pathways embedded in high schools, a “pre-apprenticeship layer” that prepares people to succeed in the workplace, and paid internships normalized for all workers as they already are for college and graduate students. At every step along the way, incentives must focus on employment outcomes: only with data that follows students and workers over time can schools and employers understand what works, and public policy hold them accountable for success.

Proven pathways to good jobs already exist. Now the task is to make them visible, accessible, and scalable—not as isolated pilots, but as durable civic infrastructure. For millions of Americans, the best route to opportunity begins not in a lecture hall, but with a paycheck, a mentor, and the chance to learn by doing. And success at rebuilding American industry will depend on whether we build the systems that allow them to do exactly that.