Trends: Apprenticeship programs putting workers on track for finance jobs

CHICAGO - Victor Gutierrez graduated from high school with a clear career goal - to become an actuary. What he didn't have was a clear path to get there.

Juggling community college with jobs at a McDonald's and a Holiday Inn, Gutierrez had little time for his studies. He worked nearly every day, leaving home at 4 a.m. and returning at midnight, always exhausted and rarely seeing his wife and infant daughter.

Gutierrez told his counselor at Harold Washington College, part of the City Colleges of Chicago system, that he needed another way. As it happened, one had just become available.

Gutierrez now is in the first apprenticeship class at Aon, a global insurance and risk management giant, where he is paid to work and go to school as he pursues his associate degree in business management, with the hope of eventually getting a bachelor's in actuarial science.

'It's a complete life-changer,” Gutierrez, 18, said as he sat in the gray suit and tie he wears to work each day in Aon's downtown skyscraper.

Apprenticeships, which often are the domain of the skilled trades, are gaining traction in financial services, one of several white-collar industries the U.S. Department of Labor is pushing to adopt the earn-and-learn model to open a way into a good-paying career without loads of student debt.

Efforts to grow apprenticeships have bipartisan support. The Obama administration set a goal of doubling apprenticeships to 750,000 by 2019 and distributed $265 million in grants to expand and create programs. President Donald Trump has not unveiled formal initiatives yet but has expressed support for apprenticeships.

During a roundtable about vocational training in March, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff encouraged Trump to 'take a moonshot goal to create five million apprenticeships in the next five years,” to which Trump responded: 'Let's go for that five million.”

The 26 apprentices who started at Aon in January are a drop in that bucket, but the company hopes its experience sets an example.

Aon's two-year program recruits high school graduates for positions that traditionally have gone to those with bachelor's degrees. Apprentices work four days a week at Aon and spend one day taking classes at community college.

By the end they'll have their associate's degrees and offers for permanent positions at the company.

Aon pays the apprentices $38,500 a year plus their tuition, and gives them benefits.

To Gutierrez, that salary meant he could shed his other jobs, focus on his career and find family balance.

John Ladd, administrator of the Office of Apprenticeship and Training Administration at the U.S. Department of Labor, told executives at the event that business must lead the effort.

'Government has an important role, but ultimately this is a business solution,” Ladd said. 'The old ways of finding talent aren't working and we have to find other ways to bring talented people into the workplace.”