This program is the product of two distinct initiatives: First, the Sister City relationship between Austin, Texas, and Koblenz, Germany; Second, the Mayor's Task Force on School-to-Work Transition and Career Pathways.
The Sister City relationship between Austin and Koblenz is a key factor in the success of its apprenticeship exchange program. It created a foundation of mutual interest and trust between the educational, commercial, government sectors of the two communities, as well as many individual friendships.
In 1987, new Austin residents Dick & Renata Anderson spearheaded a 5-year process to link Austin and Koblenz, Germany. Even before 1992, when the mutual friendship treaty was signed, the two cities launched a series of educational exchanges. One of these is between elementary schools, another at the high-school level, and an undergraudate exchange has recently been formalized. The Graduate School of Business of the University of Texas at Austin created its first double-degree program with the WHU, a private graduate school in Koblenz. This program is now in its 10th year, and is highly regarded by both the faculty and students of both institutions. There is even a Texas-Ex Society in Koblenz, second only in size to the German-Harvard Alumni Association.
In 1993, Mayor Bruce Todd created a Task Force of business and civic leaders, charging it to develop plans for an effective school-to-career program in Austin, withRenata Anderson as one of its founding members. Out of this Task Force developed The Capital Area Training Foundation, which administers Austin's the School-to-Career.
One of the accomplishments of the Task Force was a conference entitled:
This conference was organized in Austin in the Spring of 1994 by Dr. Robert Glover, a business guru, a research scientist at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin and a world authority on the subject of school-to-career. Dr. Glover arranged for Mr. Karl-Juergen Wilbert, Executive Director of the Handwerkskammer-Koblenz , to outline how Germany trains its young people.
German cities have two business organizations: the Industrie und Handelskammer (IHK) , which corresponds to our Chamber of Commerce, and the Handwerkskammer, a parallel organizationfor small and medium-sized business, including most of the skilled craft trades. The Handwerkskammer-Koblenz is one of themost highly respected Chambers in Germany, and in1994 had recently completed the construction of a $30 million,state-of-the-art training center.
Mr. Wilbert had previously visited Austin on two occasions toadvise the Mayor's Task Force. He had become impatient with the seemingly endless discussions and told the Task Force to stop revising their plans and "Just do it!"
At the 1994 conference, Mr. Wilbert made a truly generous and far-sighted offer: he invited 15 Austin young people to work in Koblenz in abbreviated two-year apprenticeships. Those who successfully completed the program would be certified as Geselle --Journeymen-- exactly as if they were young Germans. This was a unique opportunity, and a daring experiment in international business cooperation and education. Nothing comparable had ever been tried before.
Thirteen recent Austin high school graduates were given as much training in spoken German as was possible in the short time available, and flew to Koblenz in January of 1995 to begin their two-year apprenticeships. They just did it!
Not surprisingly, this new program had its share of problems. As Dr. Sharon Knotts-Green of Motorola pointed out, these young Texans had to cope with three new sets of challenges at the same time: learning the German language, understanding German work practices, and fitting into German society. It's hard to give sufficient credit to the young people who pioneered this program and who endured the inevitable debugging process, both in Koblenz and in Austin.
Some of the apprentices were housed with Koblenz families, while others lived in dormitories or apartments. There was a considerable amount of moving about in the early months, as the various cultural and language difficulties were worked out, but eventually all the apprentices settled down in their new homes and jobs.
Like German apprentices, the young Texans received full medical coverage and other benefits at work, and were paid apprentice wages. But since German apprentices traditionally live with their families, this wage is not intended to cover living expenses. In our case, their incomes had to be supplemented from Austin. Raising these funds was an unending task , and funding shortfalls more than once threatened to bring the program to an early end. But generous contributions from the Austin business community and a few last-minute grants made it possible to continue, although the apprentices received barely enough funds to live on.
For a number of reasons, six of the group elected to return home before completing their apprenticeships. Almost all of them, nevertheless, look back on their experience in Koblenz as a highly positive one. Several have said that what they learned in Koblenz would be invaluable to them, no matter what they did later in life.
Seven of the original group stayed the full two years and were graduated in December, 1996. The ceremony was shown on German national television, and a group from Austin flew to Koblenz to be there. As an indication of the importance given to this program, the delegation included Glenn West, President of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, and Dr. James Fox, the Superintendent of the Austin Independent School District. Both are now enthusiastic supporters of apprentice training.
All the participants in this pilot project have pronounced it a major success. Both the German and American Governments are anxious to see the program replicated, and have promised their support. In May, 1997, the U.S. Embassy and USIA in Washington organized a conference in Frankfurt to introduce this program to other German cities, at which Renata Anderson was a featured speaker. Many of the participants expressed their interest in starting similar exchanges.
The first group of apprentices have returned to Austin. Two are planning to continue on to college or to a professional school. The others are all working in the Austin area, with excellent career opportunities in front of them. Each is earning substantially more than they would have without their apprentice training.
These journeymen are all in their early twenties, but in skills, sophistication and maturity, they are years ahead of most of their contemporaries. All of them now speak fluent German, and have acquired skills and techniques that are in great demand in the U. S. workplace. Most important, they are now adults. All of them have learned how to live in a different society, ways of coping with unfamiliar problems and situations, and the importance of self-discipline, persistence, reliability, and flexibility in thinking and attitudes. These skills are certain to be invaluable in today's global economy, and could hardly have been learned by any other means so quickly and at such modest cost.
In May of 1997, a second group of young Austinites went to Koblenz to begin their apprenticeships, and a third group is being selected to go over in the last quarter of 1998. The IHK (Chamber of Commerce) in Koblenz has now joined the program, and their participation will open up more than a hundred potential new professions for Austin apprentices.
The success of this experiment has garnered a great deal of favorable national publicity in both countries. Because of the interest of other cities in developing similar programs, Renata Anderson has formed Apprenticeships International , a consulting organization in the field of international school-to-career programs. The organization's goal is to use her unique experience with Austin/Koblenz to help other cities develop their own programs without the many mistakes of the pilot program.