05/07/2026
For those who have not heard yet, Southeast Community College's Automotive Technology program is now offering an Automotive Apprenticeship Program. Partnering with repair shops in Nebraska that are looking for additional options to upskill their employees and find and develop new talent that traditional pathways may have missed. Please reach out if you would like more information on how to join the apprenticeship revolution that is coming in our industry.
Stand outside a club in Vegas on a Saturday night and watch the velvet rope do its job. It isn't there for show. It's there to make the thing behind it mean something.
That is what Registered Apprenticeship was built to be. And at its best, that is exactly what it is.
Something about this framing makes people in the apprenticeship world squirm, so let me say it plainly: Registered Apprenticeship is the bottle service, the VIP table, the red carpet of workforce development. It is the highest-investment, highest-rigor, highest-return training structure we have in this country. An employer offers real mentorship and wages that rise with skill. A sponsor commits to program design and coordination across years. A related instruction partner — a community college, a CTE provider, an industry training organization — brings the classroom and technical instruction alongside the on-the-job work. A state agency holds the registration and quality line. At the end of all of that, the apprentice walks out with a journeyworker credential (what the system calls a program completer) that actually travels — one that employers recognize across state lines, that the industry honors as a real credential, that is portable in the way we keep promising credentials will be.
And here is what that produces on the other side. An apprentice who feels their time was well spent. Who wants to stay in the occupation they just trained into. Who tells their friends. An employer who got the worker they actually needed — the investment penciled, the bet paid off, their club stays open. And, almost always, other employers watching that outcome and wanting in. Retention and growth are not separate problems from quality. They are what quality generates when the model works. A million apprentices is what we get when each one walks out telling the next one this was worth it — and when employers watch their competitors build something they wish they had.
Taken from an article written by Dennis M. Founding Executive Director, NASTAD | Building National Infrastructure for Apprenticeship Systems
Apprenticeship Is Bottle Service. Keep the Rope Up.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/apprenticeship-bottle-service-keep-rope-up-denise-miller-gqgrc/
