General News
South Carolina's expanding apprenticeship initiative cracked a goal this week that it set a decade ago, when hardly anyone in the state signed up for on-the-job training programs. Apprenticeship Carolina says more than 26,000 people have now enrolled in its programs since the initiative was set up in 2007, when fewer than 800 were signed up. When it was established, its original ambition was to hit 20,000 by 2020. At last count, the U.S. Department of Labor says, nearly 5,300 people were actively apprenticing in South Carolina last year. That's an increase of nearly two-thirds in the last five years. The initiative, run by the S.C. Technical College System, pairs paid work with classes at community colleges.