Apprenticeships and career pathways

While there is vast diversity in apprenticeship concepts and practices in Europe, the U.S. and other regions of the world, all apprenticeships are designed to support both the professional growth of workforce participants, and business growth. Apprenticeships offer an efficient path to gaining valuable credentials and qualifications and thus are an important component of many career pathways. This chapter focuses on apprenticeships as a promising form of acquiring skills and credentials needed to fill the qualification gap of both white-collar and blue-collar workers. It provides a brief history of apprenticeship concepts, and covers topics such as alignment of career pathways with apprenticeship concepts and trends. It illustrates the main ideas with examples of apprenticeship concepts and systems in several European countries and in the U.S. Finally, it concludes with some considerations concerning future directions for research and practice.