White House Announces $175M for American Apprenticeship Grants

In a fact sheet released ahead of President Obama’s visit to Macomb Community College in Warren, MI, this week the Obama administration announced new steps to expand apprenticeships and continue other efforts around workforce development and free community college. Notable initiatives announced include: $175 million grants to provide apprenticeship opportunities to 34,000 individuals; the launch of Heads Up America, an independent campaign to raise awareness about the importance of community colleges; and, the creation of the College Promise Advisory Board to further the administration’s efforts to make two years of community college free to responsible students.

The $175 million for American Apprenticeship Grants awarded to 46 public-private partnerships will help train and hire more than 34,000 new apprentices in emerging industries such as health care, IT, and advanced manufacturing. In addition to expanding apprenticeship programs into growing industries, the program also seeks to scale apprenticeship models that have already proven successful, such as the International Transportation Learning Center in Silver Spring, MD, and the Focus: HOPE American Apprenticeship Program in Detroit. Progress Update on Job Driven Training and Apprenticeships, a report released by the White House and the Department of Labor, describes in additional detail the $1.2 billion in competitive grants and $8 billion in non-competitive formula funding for training investments into job-driven strategies by the Obama Administration.

President Obama also announced that Jill Biden will chair the newly created and independent College Promise Advisory Board, which is dedicated to sharing best practices and ideas for models to make community college free as well as recruiting additional leaders around this cause. Building on the President’s January 2015 proposal to make community college free for responsible students, the first initiative of the advisory board is Heads Up America, a campaign to raise awareness about the importance of U.S. community colleges.