Episode 120: Stacia Edwards and Daniel Serota on Successful Degree Apprenticeships
Listen On
What does it take to build, operate, and scale a successful degree apprenticeship program? How can higher education institutions and employers collaborate to drive student retention, mobility, and career growth? We talk through these with Stacia Edwards the Deputy Provost at City Colleges of Chicago and Daniel Serota the Vice President of Government Affairs at Aon. Together, they outline actionable strategies for managing curriculum, providing wraparound support, solving the early-career experience catch-22, and scaling regional employer networks to future-proof the workforce in the age of AI.
Revolutionizing Higher Ed: How Degree Apprenticeships Bridge the Experience Gap and Drive Student Success
In today’s fast-changing workforce landscape, higher education leaders face a growing dilemma: how to ensure graduates enter the job market with the practical skills, industry knowledge, and experience that employers demand. Traditional degree models often fall short of solving the classic "experience catch-22"—you need a job to get experience, but you need experience to get a job.
Enter the degree apprenticeship model. By fusing classroom instruction with paid, hands-on corporate experience, institutions are discovering a powerful mechanism for upward mobility, improved retention, and long-term career growth.
Through a landmark 10-year partnership, City Colleges of Chicago and global professional services firm Aon have cracked the code on building, operating, and scaling a successful degree apprenticeship program. Their collaborative approach provides a roadmap for higher education administrators looking to modernize their offerings, deepen community ties, and drive meaningful student outcomes.
Redefining Student Success Through Earn-and-Learn Models
Historically, student success was measured almost exclusively through graduation rates and course completion. While those metrics remain vital, modern higher education demands a broader perspective—one that includes career placement, wage progression, and long-term upward mobility.
Degree apprenticeships shift the narrative from simply earning a degree to building a career. Under this framework, students are hired by corporate partners on day one. They earn a competitive wage with full benefits while attending classes toward an associate degree, with tuition and books fully covered by the employer.
This dual approach yields significant dividends for both students and organizations:
For Students: It removes financial barriers, provides immediate professional context for academic lessons, and guarantees a clear pathway to full-time employment upon graduation.
For Employers: It solves early-career retention challenges, broadens the talent pipeline, and builds a loyal, highly skilled workforce tailored to specific business needs.
When academic goals align directly with career opportunities, students gain non-academic stability—such as financial security and clear professional direction—that keeps them enrolled and motivated to succeed.
Building Scalable Higher Ed Apprenticeships Through Centralized Systems
One of the largest hurdles higher education institutions face when launching experiential learning programs is operational friction. Managing employer relationships, coordinating class schedules around work hours, and tracking student progress across multiple departments can quickly overwhelm academic staff.
To overcome these operational bottlenecks, City Colleges of Chicago established a dedicated Office of Apprenticeships. Serving as a centralized "easy button" for corporate partners, this office streamlines communication, aligns degree curricula with industry demand, and manages student recruitment.
Key components of an effective higher ed apprenticeship infrastructure include:
1. Sector-Focused Campuses
Rather than competing internally, multi-campus systems can align specific colleges with key regional industries (e.g., healthcare, technology, or finance). This gives employers a clear entry point for partnership and simplifies program development.
2. The Relationship Triangle
Long-term program stability relies on tight coordination between three stakeholders: the student, the college, and the employer manager. Early intervention channels allow advisors and managers to address attendance or academic issues collaboratively before they turn into major roadblocks.
3. Pre-Apprenticeships and Durable Skills
Preparing students for corporate environments requires more than technical training. Structured pre-apprenticeship coursework helps students identify and articulate essential workforce skills—such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and team collaboration—before they walk through an employer's doors.
Future-Proofing the Workforce in the Age of AI
As technology and automation continue to reshape entry-level job descriptions, higher education must adapt its curriculum to keep pace. Degree apprenticeships offer an agile framework for workforce development, allowing institutions to continuously refine learning outcomes in real time based on industry shifts.
Rather than replacing human talent, emerging tools like artificial intelligence emphasize the need for human capacity, strategic thinking, and applied learning. Work-integrated learning ensures that students develop both technical fluency and practical experience, making them far more resilient in an evolving job market.
By lowering the barrier to entry for local talent and creating structured pathways for local hiring, colleges and corporate leaders can expand these programs from local pilot initiatives into regional networks. Higher education leaders who embrace these collaborative frameworks will not only enhance institutional relevance, but also transform the trajectory of the students and communities they serve.
Episode 120 Transcript
-
Elliot Felix: That was Stacia Edwards from City Colleges of Chicago and Daniel Serrata from the professional services firm Aon. We had a great conversation about what it takes to build, operate, and scale a successful degree apprenticeship program based on their 10-year partnership. We talked through the recruiting, the curriculum, the wraparound support, and the outcomes so you understand what it takes to make it work and where they're going next, scaling up to reach more students and engage more employers. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Connected College podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and the way they're organized to enable student success. Join me for insightful interviews with higher ed innovators, sharing the stories, stats, and strategies to create better connected colleges and universities. Welcome Stacia and Daniel. I'm so excited for our conversation about how apprenticeships drive student success, and to hear about this great partnership between City Colleges of Chicago and Aon.
Daniel Serota: Thank you for having us. Very much appreciate it and look forward to the conversation today.
Stacia Edwards: Yes, thank you.
Elliot Felix: So let's hear a little bit about how you each got started and what you're up to today, a little bit about your roles at City Colleges and Aon. Maybe Stacia you go first?
Stacia Edwards: Sure. Thanks. What a nice broad question to start with. How did I get started in higher ed? My first path, I know. It's so funny. I never knew there were jobs in higher ed, right? And my first job out of college was in higher ed. And over the course of time, I've been able to work at the department level, at the college level, at the state level, and I believe firmly, even after all these years, higher education really is, just the game changer. It is the thing that leads to upward mobility, and I feel I just am privileged to get to work in this space every day. In my current role I am working on things that are student-facing, is how I describe it in my... what is a deputy provost, right? So I'm really looking at things like workforce development, all of the curriculum development. When you think about early college and thinking about getting students engaged early, those are the types of things that I oversee every day.
Elliot Felix: That's awesome. And can you paint a picture for us of City Colleges, just so we have a sense of what you're all about, how many students, where you're located?
Stacia Edwards: Absolutely.
Elliot Felix: Your name but,
Stacia Edwards: So City Colleges of Chicago is seven independently accredited colleges that are located within the city of Chicago, and I work at the district level. And so we have one catalog for all seven of those colleges. So we are seven independent units, but also we are one in the way that we operate. And the city of Chicago has a number of different neighborhoods, and each neighborhood has its own personality, and similarly, each one of our colleges has its own personality. And one of the ways that we characterize that is by the course offerings that they're focused on. We call that our sector strategy. So each one of our colleges really does have a unique offering related to the high-demand industries in the city of Chicago. So if you think the easiest thing to think about is healthcare, the place that you would go, for instance, would be Malcolm X. Malcolm X has our virtual hospital. It is the place where a company can go and know that they'll get responded to in the healthcare area.
Elliot Felix: Can I just take a moment to say I'm such a big fan of having a focus for each of these campuses because instead of competing for students and confusing everybody, you can complement each other and collaborate, and it's what I wish more folks do. So it's just... That's awesome. I love the model.
Stacia Edwards: The most important piece from my perspective is that employers then know where to go. So there's one place for them to go, and even though that may mean that they go to one of the other colleges to have their needs met, they know where that first right door is.
Elliot Felix: That's so critical. Dan, what's your story?
Daniel Serota: Look, thanks for the opportunity to come on. I'm Daniel Serota. I lead government affairs for Aon in North America. I came to the firm in 2016 to really come in and really engage into this apprenticeship program when I first started. And one of the biggest tasks that our CEO, Greg Case, was dealing with was a retention problem in our early careers program. And we had a big office in London that had apprenticeship as kind of a part model that he saw and wanted to bring that to the United States as an opportunity to expand that model and really think differently about workforce. And I came in and really started to help build a great relationship with City Colleges, and it really started with Chancellor Salgado coming in and really looking outward to the employer partners and finding the opportunity to collaborate, partner, and really create broad curriculum. He actually joined a program, Leadership Greater Chicago, with our head of global public affairs, Bridget Gainer, and that really started this collaboration and partnership of really how to make an apprenticeship model work, but also make it where an organization like Aon can hire individuals where a four-year degree isn't the only way to get in our company. That we really needed to start thinking differently around degrees, but also think differently about the people we hire at a localized level. And that's really how this partnership grew. First started at the top with our CEO and really wanted to make this work, because retention was a really big problem. We would bring in individuals from different schools, but they would leave six, seven, eight months into a job, and we needed consistency. We needed a model that would last, but also something that would create kind of that entry-level starting place for growth. And I really started to embed into it. We created the model, we grew the model, and then part of where I came in too, was actually how do we get others to jump in from the employer space? How do we get others to see that this could be the workforce of the future? And we've grown tenfold, and the Chicago Apprentice Network kind of became what it is. And we're 10 years already into it. We have 110 employers and continue to grow this model across the city, but also across the state and across the country, where we actually have 11 networks now that are in different cities looking to expand apprenticeship as the new future of work.
Elliot Felix: Such a great model, and I think hearing from both of you, you talked about mobility. Daniel, you talked about retention and growth. I would love to hear how do you each define student success?
Daniel Serota: I think this model creates an opportunity that individuals wouldn't have had if employers didn't step up to really amplify scalability growth, but also a career path. So individuals that really jump into this model get a head start, right? Get that opportunity to come in and really have a job that's going to be long-lasting, an opportunity for a career of the future while getting a degree. And from the employer standpoint, the ROI is retention, but also good talent, right? Good talent that, 10 years ago we never thought could come in and do the jobs that we needed to get done, and it's rethinking and redesigning to help create opportunity. And for the students, they're getting into top organizations across the city that really are giving that opportunity of growth, but are actually seeing an ROI and potential for them to move forward. And student success is the opportunity to grow, right? Opportunity to be able to help their family pay for their mortgage, pay for groceries. And the individuals we're hiring are widespread, right? Entry-level jobs to mid-tier where they were working in retail or working at fast food or working at a hotel, which are jobs that are needed, but also an opportunity to really get a head start in their career while going to an institution like City Colleges to really getting that associate's degree education for growth and opportunity to help their families be able to move forward.
Stacia Edwards: One of the things that you heard from Daniel is that we really have leaned into the concept of a degree apprenticeship. And what you see nationally is that the degree apprenticeships actually have a higher retention and a higher completion rate. And it makes sense, right? So you're going along, you're taking your coursework, your credit coursework as you're working with the employer, and everyone has the same goal, which is that the student achieves that degree. And what does that do for the student? It gives them a currency that they can take at some point, if they wanted to add to that, they can then go and get their bachelor's degree. If at some point they need to go further to get into leadership in an organization, we're setting them up for that. And so we really appreciate companies who lean into that model with us right now. And again, I highlight the fact that Aon hires students day one. So Aon is hiring students at the beginning of their associate degree journey. And the other thing I want to add there is that when we think about student success, we want to make sure that we're putting them on a relevant pathway that has been influenced by what the employer needs. We want to make sure that they have all the supports that they need while they're moving through their degree program. And so those can be wraparound supports that include tutoring, but it might also relate to... we now have programs related to food security where students can just come to a market on our campuses. We're really paying attention to those other things that can derail a student that aren't necessarily academic. We're paying a lot of attention to what's going on in the classroom, and then we want to make sure that students get to that finish line that they started on, right? So they came in our door, and they had a desire to achieve something. And so our goal and what success looks like to us is that student gets to that point where they've achieved their goal and that they're on that path to upward mobility.
-
Elliot Felix: So student success is the opportunity to grow and achieve your goals and have that upward mobility, and it sounds like the way you're getting at that is through this integration of the apprenticeship program and the wraparound support. And I would love to dig into, okay, so students are enrolled, they're hired on day one. What are the nuts and bolts of how that actually works? Is it like a certain day of the week is set aside? Or walk us through how this actually works, how you're making it happen.
Daniel Serota: From the employer piece, we are actually paying for their education, and we're also paying for their books, and they also get full benefits like a full-time employee would working within our organization. So it's us really spending the capital to make sure it is successful, but we're investing in the students' success for growth and opportunity to continue to move forward within our firm. It's an earn-and-learn model, right? So they're going to school and working at the same time. And if you've ever done that to your listeners, it's not an easy task, right? So being able to continue to move forward strategically and being able to do your coursework, continue to keep up grades, and continue to move forward is a priority of the program. Because we believe that if you are able to do both, but also continue to take what you're learning in the classroom and then implementing it into your day-to-day job, that will also help you continue to grow but also be successful within this firm. We also believe that part of this collaboration is the right manager fit within our organization to understand the timing that school is also a priority in this process for two years of their associate's degree to then at the end of their associate's degree and the end of the two years, they get a full-time job at Aon, right? So when they get that associate's degree, and they are able to complete their apprenticeship program of really learning the business, learning the role, they have a full-time job after the program, which then gives them the motivation and the growth to being able to move forward and strategically do that. So the schedules vary depending on classes. I think the great thing about City Colleges is they actually created an office of apprenticeship that actually is our point of contact that helps us when we're starting to build the model and build the program that we have a point person within Stacia's team that we partner with and work with to help drive what the schedules are looking like so then managers are aware, and then we're able to continue to collaborate and move forward strategically to make sure that we are either updating the classes that they're going to be taking based on innovation or based on different things. But we're also in constant communication depending on situations of students or depending on what's going on as an easy button, right? To make it easier for the business to work with the community college. And we've been doing it for 10 years, and it's been such a great success.
Elliot Felix: Love the Office of Apprenticeship as the easy button to have that point of contact and to enable that integrated learn and earn model, and I think it's just so smart to do that. When I talk or when I visit campuses, I'm startled to learn that 65% of undergrads are working and that 40% of them are working full-time. We talk about the future of work and the future workforce, but actually today's students are already the current workforce as well as the future workforce, so connecting them makes so much sense. And I guess I have a quick follow-up because you're making this tremendous investment in the people that are in the program, right? You're offering them employment, you're paying for the education, you're paying for the books. You're having this full-time position. What's the selection process look like? How are you interviewing and selecting students to participate?
Daniel Serota: Yeah. So the City College partnership has also helped us with recruiting individuals that are going into their associate's degree. Helping promote, helping us recruit, helping us collaborate. We call it an apprenticeship day within Aon. Managers are able to come meet individuals that really are able to get a feel, right? Are they going to be a right culture fit? Are they going to be the right person that is going to be able to come into our firm and learn and be ready to learn, but really being able to understand the job at hand. We believe that it's really important that this individual has worked before or have had some sort of job to understand that you have got to be here at 9:00 when it's 9:00, and you have got to be here till 5:00, and you have to be able to multitask and be able to embed themselves in the process of being able to do that. The selection process, they have to do a placement test that goes within City Colleges to make sure they're able to get into the program. But that also creates this opportunity for them to meet Aon and want to work here and want to be able to embed themselves within the culture. We do intro talks within the City Colleges to educate students of what it is. I think the reputation has been pretty high. We get a big selection of people that are interested. But it also gives them an opportunity to understand what job it is, what type of role we're looking for, and then it creates an opportunity of a pathway, right? And we have recruiters that go to the City Colleges job fairs and also educate people of kind of what the model is and what we're doing. It has been an added part of our strategy, right? So this is a corporate strategy that we have done in eight of our cities that we recruit from, that apprenticeship is part of that model, and we're growing, right? So we're going to have new offices in the coming years that really are going to embed this because we see the value and the ROI and what it means for our firm to strategically move forward.
Elliot Felix: And Stacia, how do you organize yourselves to make this work? It sounds like you've got the Office of Apprenticeship, but and you've got these wraparound supports. Could you talk a little bit more about how you've organized the courses, the curriculum, the support, and administration to make all this work so well?
Stacia Edwards: So I believe Daniel is a very humble human, but he talked about the fact that he created the Chicago Apprenticeship Network. He co-created that organization, and as a result of that, we were able to get resources to stand up this Office of Apprenticeships. And before that, we just didn't have any organized mechanism to respond to employers or to even understand what the needs are for employers to not only get an apprenticeship program going, but to keep it going, right? And I think that's what stands out for me in our relationship with Aon is it's 10 years. So I go to a student or if a recruiter says, "Hey, there's this Aon apprenticeship," it isn't something new. It isn't out of the blue. We can show you a student who's well on their way past having gone through the apprenticeship program. And the things that they've accomplished, I'm telling you, every time one of them speaks, it's incredible what they've done, what they're doing, and how it's changed their life. It's absolutely changed their life. There's so much research out there about your first job, but when you can start your first job at a higher wage, that makes a difference for the rest of your life. And again, Aon has solved their retention problem, but also those students have incredible skills by the time that they get their associate degree because they've had all of this work-based learning associated with their book learning. So I just want to lift up Aon again because it really is remarkable what they have committed to. And they have people paying attention to what's going on with the students, as he highlighted with the managers. We also have people paying attention in our apprenticeship office to what's going on with the students here. And so that relationship, that triangle—the student, City Colleges, and the business, Aon—just pay a lot of attention to that because we found over time that if the minute you take your eye off of that, that's when things potentially can fall apart. So something happens with the student, they don't show up on time. If you don't have a conversation immediately, the student might be in a position where they're embarrassed as to why they didn't show up on time. So if the manager doesn't feel comfortable talking to us, or if the student doesn't feel comfortable talking to someone, we all are in it together. And so I think that is one of the things that makes it so great. It's also one of the things that gives us pause when we think about scale. We really are doing a lot of things by hand when it comes to attracting students and engaging students and then putting them with employers. We're thinking a lot about scale at this point and some of the things that we might be able to automate along the way, just like that triangle that I just described. There are systems out there now that can actually help us with that so that we can more regularly just check in, right? It's just a check-in as opposed to I'm trying to reach you, I'm sending you an email. Also the same thing for us with recruiting more broadly. Right now we hear from an employer. Employer tells us that they're looking for X, Y, and Z. We actually go into our degree programs. We look for the learning outcomes. We then look for students who've done well in courses with those learning outcomes. We send them an email. We then get responses. We then work with that student to get them ready, and then we present them to the employers to make that match, that hire. That's the other thing that we're really thinking about right now. How could we more efficiently do just even that recruitment process so that we have more time and more capacity to engage more employers and students?
-
Elliot Felix: It sounds like part of the secret of success is that it's a high-touch collaborative approach, and you're thinking about how to scale it. Do you think that's why more folks aren't doing these kinds of integrated apprenticeship programs and forging these kinds of college-company partnerships? What's holding folks back?
Daniel Serota: I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of employers, right? And part of the Chicago Apprentice Network mindset is how do we start creating more conversation about what works but also solve the problems of what doesn't work, right? Because we've seen it, and we actually created a playbook that makes it where I want an employer to read it and then think it's an easy button to implement, right? So they don't reinvent the wheel. And don't just take it from me, right? There's 100 employers just in Chicago that have done this in almost every sector to really look at entry-level jobs and say, "Could this work for this? Could it work for this?" And if you look at a job description, does it really need a four-year degree, or could this model fit my need but also help me hire local talent and keep them long term? And the biggest thing that I hear is it takes time, and it's also a risk, right? A lot of times when you're looking at this type of model or changing your footprint of strategy, that takes a lot of time within an HR department, and it takes a lot of investment to be able to do so. And sometimes, in my observation, it takes senior leadership to drive it and say, "I am willing to invest to be able to drive this as an opportunity to be able to move forward." A lot of times, too, if you're a middle to small company, it's a little bit easier to wrap your head around it but also figure out a way to further embed themselves. If you're dealing with a Fortune 500 or an upper company, it usually comes from the CEO or CHRO to say, "Yeah, we're going to do this," and being able to partner and collaborate. And part of what the network's job was to make it where an employer can talk to an employer, and also an employer can go meet an apprentice, right? Go meet these individuals because, as Stacia said, their stories are phenomenal, right? From working in a retail shop or working a nine-to-five job, hourly job, and then now coming into an employer, working full time. And now we have apprentices that are now managing apprentices, right? And we have apprentices that are now moving up the ladder of driving a career path because they're showing their stuff. And if you don't give those individuals a shot, you're never going to know, and you're never going to know the impact they could do for others. And I always tell the story that I took my family to Millennium Park, and one day I saw four different Aon T-shirts that apprentices were wearing externally. Because they're so proud to work at our company, right? They're so proud to wear the Aon colors because we have given them a shot to be able to grow, and they're proving their value and their point because they're creating opportunity, right? And the more ways we're able to continue to grow this model and grow it with other employers, it becomes business as usual, right? It becomes a recruitment path for the future that then creates opportunity for growth, which I'm excited about, and I think we're going to continue to move in that mindset more and more.
Elliot Felix: So it sounds like it starts with changing people's expectations about how you can learn and earn, you can have different sorts of credentials, and then it takes leadership to spread that word, and then it takes a network that gives you kind of community and best practices so you learn from each other, talk to each other, and work together, which I think is such a great model. We've been talking about growth. Now you've been at this 10 years, I would love to hear how things have changed and how you see it changing in the future. As people are thinking about apprenticeship programs into the future, what should be on their horizon so that they're future-proofing or they're being agile about how they do this?
Stacia Edwards: So we've seen growth. We've certainly seen growth in the number of apprenticeships and the number of companies that have come in the door to do apprenticeships with us. We are... We're just in a moment in time where we're, like I said before, really thinking about scale. And we have a hypothesis right now, and we have a project that we're calling our moonshot. And the goal of the moonshot for the City of Chicago, driven by City Colleges of Chicago and wonderful partners like you've seen here, is that we would get to that point of scale. And I just want to highlight four pillars of this moonshot. One of the pillars is recruitment. So for years and years we have done recruitment that we need someone to come in our door, but we really have been recruiting for specificity, right? And we've really got to get to the point where we're talking to students about what the opportunities are that lead to upward mobility. And what I mean about that is, for instance, in IT we can be our own worst enemy in higher ed. We've responded to businesses, and we have these amazing programs, but what is the difference between AI and cybersecurity and cloud and software development? Each one of those is a degree program. Each one of them meets the needs of employers, but if I'm going to a student who really doesn't even know the world of that, how can I better recruit them so that they are going into these high-demand programs, right? I have got to get that volume up. And then the second thing is we're really working on identifying those work-ready skills and making sure that students have an opportunity to move their way through those work-ready skills. So you've heard it, or durable skills, whatever we want to call them. Our students are getting experience in problem-solving in certain courses. They're getting experience in teamwork. Everyone's had a team project in college, right? But we're not doing a great job of helping the students articulate that. And so we want to make sure that all of that work, and then some, is being captured and that the student can talk about it. And we're calling that, for students who are interested, we're calling that a pre-apprenticeship. So the idea is for new employers who come along, we want the students to have gone through a year of their degree program and through some type of a pre-apprenticeship so that they can really articulate these durable skills as well as the skills that they've gotten along the way in their degree program. And then the other part of that hypothesis is that for some companies, just as Daniel highlighted, there's risk associated with going into an apprenticeship, and there's time. And so what we're attempting to do is to become the employer of record for businesses for the first time that they come into an apprenticeship. The idea there is that we would be able to take some pressure off them—what it means to have a manager, what the internal processes are. We can walk them through that process, and it's not quite as high stakes for them. And we're so confident in the product that we produce and our experience because all the employers have come back to us to get more students, that the next year the businesses are going to be fine, and they're going to be able to take it from there. And then the fourth pillar really is that it's a degree apprenticeship so that we all then have already established milestones, and we can all speak the same language with regards to how students are moving through those programs. This is a big endeavor. We have an anchor partner right now in IBM that is locating here as a result of the Illinois Quantum Microelectronics Park, and they are going to build a service center here. And part of that service center is that they're committing for the next five years to hire 180 apprentices from City Colleges of Chicago. We're going to use that really as a momentum builder to get other businesses engaged to say, "Hey, IBM. Here's Aon. Here are all these major corporations, and this is the way they're co-developing the talent with City Colleges of Chicago. Come on along with us." Again, it's our hypothesis. It is our theory of change to get to scale, and our goal in five years is to be hosting 500 apprentices a year, in 10 years to host 1,000 apprentices a year because we really believe that's the way that our population is going to get connected to these good-paying jobs in these wonderful companies where they really do have that opportunity for upward mobility.
-
Elliot Felix: Daniel, what does your crystal ball look like?
Daniel Serota: Elliot, I wrote an op-ed talking about this topic because I do believe apprenticeship is part of the equation around AI and the future of work. I think if we don't get it right of being able to create broader collaboration and partnerships like the ones we have at City Colleges, but across the country really thinking differently about what is the job and what is the job of the future, I think apprenticeship is that model that works. I think it creates the opportunity to prepare students, but also entry-level positions to really implement job growth, but also how to be able to implement the job strategically, not just say, "Oh, AI is going to take this job." We need to really redefine early careers as an opportunity to really add capacity, but also leverage to be able to make the individual stronger, and an apprenticeship model really helps in doing that. And I believe that apprenticeship is the future, and is something that I am really pushing hard in to basically implement more of these types of programs that doesn't matter on what the sector is to really make sure that this is part of the future of work as we do move forward. I also wear an interesting hat too, Elliot, that I actually chair Apprenticeship Illinois for the state, which is the big initiative to really continue to grow apprenticeships. And this is one of the pillars that we are really focused on, is around AI, not only the delivery system of what is happening around the workforce base more broadly, but how can we continue to educate, highlight with apprentices, and also get more employers to start thinking about this as they start moving forward instead of just eliminating but really adding capacity and creating growth.
Elliot Felix: I think that's critical because work-integrated learning, in whatever form it takes, whether it's a class project where students are acting as consultants for a company or it's a learn and earn model, I think that's really the only way to solve the experience catch-22. I wrote an op-ed with Dana Stevenson from Riipen and University Business on this because there is this... you have to have experience to get a job, and you have to have a job to get experience. The only way to break that cycle is to do what you're doing or other forms of work-integrated learning. And it's really a problem that's getting amplified by AI. So if we don't do something now, we're really going to be in trouble. And really appreciate what you both are doing and I hope others learn from this model and achieve the scale. And Stacia, I hope you get your moonshot.
Stacia Edwards: It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us because of the stable partners we've had at the table for so long. And again, we see the benefit and the value to this model. It's why the apprenticeship office... It's why it has expanded. It's why we are really leaning into this opportunity because we believe in what it does for the companies but also for the students.Elliot Felix: Thanks so much. And we'll include some of these things, the op-ed and the playbook and other things in the show notes so folks can learn more and scale with you and create student success through apprenticeships and these great long-term college-company partnerships.
Daniel Serota: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the Connected College podcast. Go to elliotfelix.com for more information about my book, the Connected College articles I've written and talks I've given. There's also tools you can download, information on upcoming events, and information on booking me to speak at your institution or organization. Please support the podcast by rating it and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where all students succeed.
-
Daniel’s Op-ed “Apprenticeship is the future of work, even in an AI economy” https://www.chicagobusiness.com/elevate/ccb-apprenticeship-value-ai-economy-20260511/2.
Chicago Apprenticeship Network “Starter Guide” https://www.chicagoapprenticenetwork.org/assets/membersAndPartners/Apprenticeship%20Starter%20Guide.pdf
Elliot’s Op-Ed with Dana Stephenson from Riipen on “Internship bottleneck: How to break the work experience Catch-22” https://universitybusiness.com/internship-bottleneck-how-to-break-the-work-experience-catch-22/