Apprenticeship National Occupational Frameworks
While there is growing interest in scaling up the use of apprenticeships in the U.S., the competencies and occupational standards that are the starting point for designing apprenticeship programs are not widely available. The lack of industry-vetted and easily available occupational standards is proving to be a challenge for the expansion of apprenticeship, particularly into new occupations and industry sectors.
To address this challenge, the U.S. Department of Labor selected the Urban Institute to establish the Registered Apprenticeship Occupations and Standards Center of Excellence. AIR is partnering with the Urban Institute to advance the Center of Excellence’s goal to build a “gold standard” infrastructure of national occupational frameworks and establish a new online collection of standards freely available for public use. This effort will help accelerate the expansion of high-quality apprenticeship programs across industry sectors.
As a partner with Urban Institute on this initiative, AIR is:
- Designing training and technical assistance resources to help organizations use the national occupational frameworks to develop and register high-quality apprenticeship programs;
- Identifying industry subject matter experts, including business, education, and workforce professionals, to review the national occupational frameworks; and
- Helping to promote and amplify the availability of the national occupational frameworks as a free resource to all partners in the apprenticeship ecosystem.
This project is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
