Are Austria's Apprentices an Endangered Species?

Vocational training gets a bad rap in the U.S., where a record 21.6 million students were enrolled in college at the start of the 2012-13 academic year. In Northern Europe, 40 percent to 70 percent of high school students opt for some form of workplace training. Austria’s apprenticeship system, which pays companies to take on 15-year-old trainees for three to four years and teach them skills such as carpentry, electrical wiring, and bread baking, has been the gateway through which 40 percent of Austria’s working-age population enters the labor force. It’s also one of the reasons youth unemployment in the Alpine nation of 8.4 million stands at only 7.6 percent, while the average across the European Union is almost 24 percent.