Exciting headlines on School Bus Safety Week, a look at vintage school buses, Blue Bird bus manufacturing investment, more Lion Electric controversy, how politics affect clean bus funding, and a closer look at Thomas Built Buses products.
Brad Hayn, director of transportation for Hoover City Schools in Alabama, discusses his district’s repeat wins of the Top Transportation Teams award presented by Transfinder, deescalating elevated student or parent behavior, and leadership by example for true teamwork.
All 100 U.S. Senators backed the Child Safety Network’s (CSN) latest call for September to be proclaimed National School Bus Safety Month, marking 13 years of bipartisan support.
CSN has worked since 1989 to protect children from injury, exploitation and other safety threats, while providing families, schools and student transportation professionals with education, resources and best practices. Each September, CSN promotes National School Bus Safety Month, encouraging parents, students, educators, motorists and school bus professionals to recognize their shared responsibility in keeping children safe on and around the school bus. Through its Safe Ride campaign, it supports the school bus industry with driver training, the latest technology and resources for transportation professionals, students, parents, and communities.
According to a press release, this year marks a milestone for CSN and its partners, as Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska enters her second decade of leadership as prime sponsor of the month.
“CSN is deeply grateful for Fischer’s sustained commitment to student transportation safety and for the bipartisan support of the senators who have helped carry this effort forward over the years,” the release states.
Fischer said she’s proud to introduce School Bus Safety Month with Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, to support transportation professionals who keep students safe.
Since 2018, Peters has repeatedly been the resolution’s lead Democratic co-sponsor, helping secure unanimous Senate support for National School Bus Safety Month and advance student safety nationwide, including for families throughout his home state. Peters is preparing to retire from the Senate at the conclusion of his term. This year marks his sixth and final year as the resolution’s lead Democratic co-sponsor. Lincoln is a Republican.
Senate Resolution 944 introduced and unanimously passed on Sept. 30 says school buses are the largest form of mass transportation in the U.S. In an average year, the proclamation reads, 48 percent of students in kindergarten through grade 12 ride a school bus, and school buses travel more than 4 billion miles during the school year. With billions of student boarding and unloading events occurring each school year, safety extends far beyond the time a child spends seated aboard the bus, the press release states.
The 2026 resolution also highlights the importance of collaboration among local, state and federal authorities, institutions of higher education, school transportation professionals, safety organizations, technology providers, and other partners working to identify and advance solutions to preventable transportation-safety threats, the press release adds.
“It encourages broadcast, digital-media and social-networking industries to help disseminate public-service messaging that provides free resources to safeguard children, recognizes school bus operators and transportation professionals, and encourages motorists to drive more safely near school buses as students board and disembark,” it continues.
The release adds that the month is also an opportunity to recognize and thank school bus operators and transportation professionals. “Every school day, families place extraordinary trust in the people responsible for getting children safely to school and safely home again,” the release concludes.
“Parents need to have the peace of mind that when they drop their kids off at the bus stop, they will get to school and back home safely,” said Peters. “I’m proud to again co-lead this bipartisan resolution with Senator Fischer to designate September as National School Bus Safety Month. This resolution will promote safe driving practices and help provide advanced training for school bus professionals to keep our kids safe on their way to and from school.”
New credential programs and apprenticeships are creating more pathways for Wisconsin workers to launch careers, switch fields and build skills throughout their working lives.
But Wisconsin policymakers could do more to make those pathways accessible to students and workers.
Those were among the themes from a conversation Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus convened Tuesday to explore how short-term credentials are reshaping careers in a range of industries — from manufacturing to health care and education.
Here are four more takeaways from the event’s two panels, which were moderated by Wisconsin Watch/Open Campus reporters Natalie Yahr and Miranda Dunlap.
Training programs are providing more on-ramps to careers than ever — and career choices don’t have to be permanent.
Panelists said workers increasingly can build skills over time through short-term credentials, apprenticeships and certificates. Wisconsin Technical College System President Layla Merrifield compared the “stackable” approach to constructing a Lego city — adding one building at a time as careers evolve.
“It’s OK to change careers. It’s OK to change your mind,” she said, encouraging students and workers to view education as a lifelong process rather than a one-time decision.
Nathan Roberts, president and owner of G.D. Roberts, a metal manufacturer in Columbus, Wisconsin, encouraged students and early-career workers to take their time, try new things and gravitate toward what gives them joy.
Parents should be patient, too.
“Give your kids enough time to figure it out,” he said.
Employers value more than just technical skills.
Knowing how to weld, code or care for patients may open the door to a profession, panelists said, but employers increasingly look for workers who can communicate, collaborate, manage projects and solve problems. Credentialing programs through technical colleges often teach those “employability” skills alongside the industry basics, Merrifield said.
That’s one reason why Roberts said he values candidates who have pursued credentials through technical colleges or adjacent institutions.
“It’s not about the morsels that they learn as much as the process you go through,” he said. “We want to know that you’re trainable. That you’re a team member. That you’re a problem solver.”
Those skills, Roberts said, are hard to find.
Apprenticeships and short-term credentials are expanding beyond the skilled trades.
Apprenticeships aren’t limited to construction and manufacturing.
“Earn-and-learn” programs have expanded into fields including health care, education, barbering, urban forestry and cosmetology, Merrifield said. Certified nursing assistant and EMT credentialing programs are particularly popular at community colleges.
“If they want to go into health care … that is a true stackable credential industry,” said Becky Kikkert, development director for the Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin.
Since 2018 UW Health in Madison has been paying employees to gain credentials for careers as nurses, surgical techs or other positions — while they are working.
Even as career pathways expand in Wisconsin, access remains uneven.
Kermit Kaleba, strategy director for credentials of value at the Lumina Foundation, noted that states have invested a combined $4.5 billion in career and technical education to date, much of it since the pandemic. But Wisconsin remains one of five states without dedicated funding for career and technical education in public schools, leaving access to many programs dependent on local school district budgets.
Merrifield said Wisconsin needs a broader conversation about what school is for — and what it isn’t.
The goal, she said, is to build a system that lets people return to learning — whether they’re 18, 38 or 48 — whenever their careers demand new skills.
“Your path is rarely as clear or as linear as you might assume. There are many on-ramps and off-ramps … There are so many opportunities,” she said. “There are so many options.”
Disclosure: The Lumina Foundation, Ascendium Education Group and the Joyce Foundation are Wisconsin Watch funders but have no control over its editorial decisions. A list of donors and funders through 2025, as well as our donation acceptance policies, can be foundhere. Ascendium and the Joyce Foundation sponsored Tuesday’s event.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin has spent decades building one of the country’s strongest apprenticeship cultures.
In 2025, the state reached record Registered Apprenticeship participation, with 18,524 apprentices across more than 3,095 employers. Youth Apprenticeship also reached record scale, enrolling 11,344 high school juniors and seniors and partnering with 7,447 employers.
Now Wisconsin needs to apply that same learn-by-doing discipline to the artificial intelligence transition.
Stanford Digital Economy Lab’s August employment update found that employment among U.S. workers ages 22-25 in highly AI-exposed occupations is about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations. The comparable measure was 15% at the July 2025 data vintage. The adjustment is appearing mainly through reduced hiring, especially where AI automates tasks people previously performed.
That matters because entry-level work is not just cheap labor. It is the training ground where people learn how an organization actually operates.
A junior analyst becomes valuable by seeing why a clean spreadsheet can still produce a bad decision. A new claims employee learns which apparently routine case contains the one fact that changes everything. A beginning marketer learns that a polished message can still be wrong for the audience. Those lessons come from repetitions, exceptions and coaching.
If AI performs the first-pass work and the employer simply eliminates the beginner, Wisconsin gets an efficiency gain today and a capability problem later.
The state should encourage an apprenticeship dividend for AI adoption. Employers that save meaningful labor time through AI should reinvest a defined share of those savings into structured learning for newer workers. That can mean mentor hours, supervised exception cases, verification rotations, paid internships or registered apprenticeship slots in occupations that have not traditionally used apprenticeship language.
Wisconsin already has the machinery to support this. Its 2026-2028 Youth Apprenticeship grant program is designed to sustain and expand work-based learning partnerships among schools, employers, colleges, workforce boards and other local organizations. The state is also directing workforce funding toward advanced manufacturing and AI through WisTRAIN, including training for human-AI collaboration.
What is missing is a measurement standard for the human side of the investment.
Employers should track time to independent competence alongside time saved. How long does it take a new worker to verify an AI-generated answer, catch an exception, explain the trade-offs and make a sound decision without close supervision? If that clock slows down even as the productivity dashboard improves, the organization is consuming its own future talent.
Wisconsin’s apprenticeship tradition offers a better path. Use AI to remove repetitive preparation, then move beginners more quickly into the work that requires judgment. Give experienced workers explicit coaching responsibilities. Make the workplace an extension of the classroom, just as the Youth Apprenticeship program already does.
AI productivity should not mean a thinner career ladder. In Wisconsin, it should fund a faster one.
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., is a behavioral scientist, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of “The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results.” He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
We’ve partnered with Open Campus, a nationwide nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education, to organize an event on how credentials impact Wisconsin’s workforce.
I enjoy editing the “pathways to success” beat because it’s where K-12, higher ed and workforce training stories intersect. I spent years covering K-12 and higher ed, and the stories I most loved reporting focused on how students took the skills they learned in the classroom into their careers.
Credentials have expanded in recent years, and it feels like the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for students, educators and employers.
So we want to know:
What credentials are employers actually hiring against?
Which community colleges are leading the shift — and which are stalling?
Where are students getting left behind by a system still designed around the four-year degree?
The event will feature a panel discussion moderated by Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus reporter Natalie Yahr. The panelists include:
Becky Kikkert, director of development, Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin
Layla Merrifield, president, Wisconsin Technical College System
Nathan Roberts, owner, G.D. Roberts
Then, we’ll hear how Wisconsin fits into the national landscape during a conversation between Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus reporter Miranda Dunlap and Kermit Kaleba, strategy director for credentials of value for the Lumina Foundation.
The event is free to attend. Here are the details:
When is it? 8-10:45 a.m. Oct. 6
Where is it? TruStage, 5910 Mineral Point Road, Madison
Will there be food? Yes, we’ll serve a complimentary continental breakfast.
What else is there to know? Registration is required. Attendees will be required to show a photo ID when they arrive at TruStage.Register here.
We hope to see you there!
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Free, simple tools can help people measure the change in inflation and see whether their pay is keeping up.
Experts Wisconsin Watch spoke to said that if your wage hasn’t changed and inflation rises, your real earnings decrease.
Workers can use inflation calculators to seek a raise if their real wages have dropped.
Inflation hit a three-year high in May, leaving a growing number of Americans struggling to afford necessities. The rate has since slowed a bit, but most prices aren’t likely to come down. Analysts say “affordability” could be one of the deciding issues in this fall’s midterm elections.
But while we all notice the spike at the gas pump and the cash register, many people may not realize they can use simple, free tools to quantify the change and figure out whether their pay is keeping up.
Wisconsin Watch talked to two experts about how and why to use inflation calculators. Here’s what they told us.
What is inflation and how do we measure it?
Inflation is a measure of how much prices have risen in a given period. Some increase in prices is to be expected — the Federal Reserve aims for 2% inflation when it sets interest rates. When prices rise quickly, consumers and businesses may struggle to buy what they need.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases monthly inflation reports showing how prices have changed over the month and the year. The most widely used of those measures is the consumer price index, which shows the change in “prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.” In other words, it’s the weighted average of the change in prices of many of the things American consumers buy. According to the bureau, this rate reflects the spending patterns of more than 90% of the U.S. population.
The bureau also publishes a variety of more specific inflation rates, including for different geographic areas and for different types of expenditures, including food and beverages, housing and medical care. It also calculates a second version of its national inflation figure, called the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which is based on the spending patterns of households where at least half of the income comes from wage or clerical work.
The latest consumer price index numbers, released on July 14, indicate prices rose 3.5% over the last 12 months. The numbers also show prices fell 0.4% in June, when adjusted for seasonal changes. The drop over the month came from falling gas prices, though the average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. remains about $1.10 higher than it was before the war in Iran began, according to a price tracker from NBC News.
Inflation today is far lower than in 2022, when it hit 8%, the highest in more than 30 years. But 3.5% is still well above the 2% target, said Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Inflation is not as big of a concern in terms of its absolute value as it was maybe four years ago, but it’s higher than we would want, and going forward we certainly don’t want inflation to be running at this pace,” Chinn said.
Meanwhile, wage growth has slowed, falling behind price growth. Nationally, wages and salaries rose 3.4% between March 2025 and March 2026, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Concern about prices rising is not just prices rising, but it’s against the backdrop of how fast wages are rising. How many people are keeping up, and what components of the population are keeping up?” Chinn said.
The inflation rate may eventually come down, meaning the rate at which prices are rising slows. And some individual prices, including gas prices, could come down too. But prices overall seldom fall.
“The price level is probably never coming down, unless we have a severe downturn of some sort,” Chinn said.
What are inflation calculators and how do I use one?
Inflation calculators let you enter a dollar value and see how the buying power of that dollar value has changed over time. One easy way to understand this is to think about what a dollar could have bought 50 years ago. Today, that dollar is essentially worth less because you’d need more than a dollar to buy the same goods. An inflation calculator can show you exactly how big the change is: You’d need $5.88 today to buy what a dollar would buy in 1976, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator.
A screenshot of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator shows how far pay goes for someone who makes $50,000 and last received a raise in 2024. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
For a more practical example, enter your wage or salary at the time of your last raise, indicate the month and year of that raise, then select the latest month for which data is available. That tells you how much that wage or salary is worth in today’s dollars.
You can also do the calculation backward to see the contrast in a different way. For example, if you earn $50,000 and you last received a raise two years ago, your pay today only goes as far as $47,038.95 at the time of your last raise. In other words, your “real salary” has fallen by 5.9%.
“If your wage is stuck and inflation is going up, your real earnings are going down,” said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee economics professor John Heywood, who directs the school’s graduate program in human resources and labor relations.
You can also use these tools to check whether a given price has been rising faster or slower than inflation. Say your rent was $900 a month in June 2024, and it rose exactly in line with the index for all prices. It would now be $956.65. If it’s risen more than that, it’s outpaced inflation.
Here are links to a few useful inflation calculators:
How can I use the information I get from an inflation calculator?
Inflation calculations can be a helpful tool for workers seeking a raise. Heywood suggests workers seeking raises gather information on both how their real earnings have declined over time and how their earnings compare with those of people in comparable positions in the industry and geographic area, and present that data to their human resources department.
“My impression is that at large corporations and at corporations that sort of follow best practices, they don’t want their workers to be paid less than their rivals or have their earnings go down, because they’re always in a competition for keeping and retaining talent,” Heywood said.
“If you can show, for example, that your wage hasn’t kept up with inflation or with your comparables, then a sensible HR department says, ‘Here’s somebody we might lose,’ and might very well be willing to increase somebody’s hourly or salary rate,” he said.
If you’re represented by a labor union, your union representatives are likely doing these kinds of calculations regularly.
“It’s part of making sure that their members don’t have their earnings eroded by inflation,” Heywood said.
To hold workers’ buying power steady, Heywood said, many union contracts include automatic cost of living adjustments. Six months into the contract period, for example, workers’ wages will rise by the same percentage that prices rose during those six months.
Clauses like those were far more common before the soaring inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, Chinn said, noting that raising wages automatically in response to inflation can sometimes make inflation worse. As economists battled to get prices under control in the 1980s, they became more skeptical of these automatic wage increases.
“It’s good for the workers, it protects their buying power, but that means the cost of making stuff rises … which then feeds into next year’s demands,” Chinn said. Thus even a temporary shock to the economy can last much longer.
But not raising pay comes at a cost too. “If they don’t get that automatic adjustment, it’s more likely they won’t get to maintain the real wage,” Chinn said.
Automatic cost of living adjustments are still common in some industries. “The auto industry uses it, (along with) aerospace, defense, postal workers, letter carriers, and a lot of local public unions,” Heywood said. “It hasn’t gone away.”
What’s the inflation forecast?
Many economists are predicting 2.5% to 3% inflation over the next year, Chinn said. He thinks those predictions are probably about right.
“That’s assuming that we’re not having a big resumption of the war with Iran that completely blocks off indefinitely the Strait of Hormuz,” Chinn said. “That assumes no big collapse in the stock market and no big jumps in a trade war going forward.”
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Labor and employment attorney Victor Forberger offered several tips for people who are filing for unemployment during a recent webinar.
He advised people to know the difference between an initial claim and a weekly certification; to know that mistakes can be used against you; to make sure you’re searching for work; to document and retain records of your work search actions; to report all job offers; and to know if the reason you left your job is valid.
In Wisconsin, filing for state assistance after becoming unemployed can be an odyssey.
A long list of mistakes can derail your claim, jeopardizing your benefits and even opening you up to legal trouble.
Wisconsin Watch attended the State Bar of Wisconsin‘s unemployment filing seminar, where labor and employment attorney Victor Forberger presented on the mechanics of the winding filing process.
We used that information to compile this list of tips and common mistakes to avoid when filing your unemployment claim. Here are some things to know.
File an initial claim, where you report that you separated from a job.
File a weekly “certification,” where you must continue to prove you meet each of the state’s criteria for benefits.
Department of Workforce Development staff and judges use the word “claim” interchangeably while referring to each of these processes, Forberger said. Knowing the difference can help lessen mistakes.
Know that mistakes can be used against you
The online system will repeatedly ask if all of the information you’re entering is truthful, as a method of protecting against fraud.
Thus, any mistake you make is assumed to be purposeful, unless you can point to a specific reason that might have caused the mistake, such as a disability, that shows you’re not at fault. That’s hard to do.
Mistakes can — and often do — lead people to be charged with fraud, enabling the state to claw back unemployment benefits and charge penalty fees.
Dates are tricky. Prepare accordingly
When you file your initial claim, you’ll be asked to select the first week you want to begin receiving benefits. That date may have nothing to do with when you actually lost your job.
“You may have suffered a job loss, and the employer gave your vacation pay that you had accrued for 20 years, and so you’re being paid now for six weeks,” Forberger said. “You don’t file your unemployment claim on the week that the job loss ended. Start your unemployment claim when the vacation pay has run out.”
People often try to start the initial claims in the past, on the date that they lost their job.
You are supposed to file your initial claim within seven days of the week you want to start receiving benefits. If it’s outside of that time frame, the state considers it a “late claim,” which is very difficult to prove and accepted under only what the state deems “exceptional circumstances.”
Reporting the wrong date could disqualify you and derail the process of receiving benefits.
Make sure you’re searching for work
The main way people disqualify themselves, Forberger said, is by not properly showing the state you are looking for new work.
You must conduct four new work search actions every week and upload the proof during the weekly certification process.
Forberger recommends doing five actions, to be safe, in the event that one action is disqualified.
Falsely reporting actions could be considered fraud, disqualifying your claim and opening you up to legal penalties.
Hang onto your documents
You should keep all of the documented proof of your work searches handy for one year.
The state randomly audits people’s work searches for accuracy, so you could be asked to submit proof of your work search actions for any particular week. Any issues could mean having to repay your benefits for that week.
Report all job offers
During the weekly certification process, you will be asked if you have turned down a “bona fide job offer” that week, meaning a legitimate job offer, complete with a pay rate and list of duties.
“It can’t just be like, ‘Hey, come by tomorrow, I got a job for you,’” Forberger said. “It’s got to be like, ‘You’re going to get hired at $15 an hour to stock shelves at my department store, and your schedule is going to be in the evenings, part time.”
During the first six weeks of your job search on unemployment, you are allowed to turn down what the state deems suitable work without threatening your benefits if the offer involves lower skills or significantly lower pay than before.
After those six weeks, you have to take any “bona fide” offer that comes your way, Forberger said. You must also report all of the offers that you’ve turned down, even if they weren’t suitable work. Failing to do these things could disqualify you from unemployment benefits.
Don’t file your weekly certifications on Sunday
People often file their weekly certifications on Sundays thinking they’re being proactive by doing it early. But there’s no phone support available to call for help on Sundays.
“There’s no need to rush because you’re going to get paid,” Forberger said. “Getting it one or two days earlier is not going to make all that much of a difference.”
Know if your reason for leaving your job is valid
When filing for unemployment, you will be asked to report why you separated from all of the jobs you’ve held within the last 18 months.
The onus is on you to understand if your reason for leaving a job is one Wisconsin considers “disqualifying,” and report it accordingly. Mistakes you make here will be treated as intentional.
Among the reasons that will disqualify you from receiving unemployment benefits:
You work a job considered “excluded.” Learn more here.
Among the reasons that are accepted:
Were laid off or your work hours were reduced because your employer did not have enough work for you.
Left your last job and can show it was for a good cause. Learn more about what is defined as “good cause” here.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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UW Health leaders created a new company called WorkForward to help health care systems and state agencies nationwide create their own apprenticeship programs.
UW Health officials started offering apprenticeships to their employees in 2018.
The program has helped the company fill entry-level roles and retain existing staff while filling gaps for in-demand positions.
But experts say apprenticeships aren’t a silver bullet: They require clinical staff to supervise apprentices; employers have to pay staff for hours they’re in school; and each state has its own regulations for apprenticeships.
Violet LaClair was ready to leave her job.
As a certified nursing assistant at UW Health in Madison, she used the skills she developed while caring for her dying grandmother for nine years. Her co-workers had supported her through her gender transition. She’d even won an award for providing “extraordinary” care.
She loved her workplace, but after four years, she wanted a change.
“I felt like I’d done it all,” LaClair said. “I felt like at some point I needed to challenge myself more.”
She thought about going back to school, but that didn’t seem doable. She was already in her 40s and didn’t have time or money to spend.
Then she learned she could get trained to be a medical assistant for free, while working, through an apprenticeship program UW Health started in 2018. She pays no school costs, and she gets paid for the time she spends in class.
Three days a week, she works at the company’s Union Corners clinic, where she gets patients situated, takes blood pressure, flushes ears and more.
“I can pretty much do anything the doctor asked me to,” LaClair said. Two days a week, she takes classes on pharmacology, laboratory procedures, and law and ethics.
“I think the program is great,” LaClair said. “It’s given me a whole new chapter in my life, and something to be excited about.”
Opportunities like these are novel, but increasingly common. The idea is simple: Maybe the country’s next nurses, surgical technologists and medical assistants are already working in hospitals and clinics. The people who’ve spent years booking appointments or drawing blood might jump at the chance to train for new careers — if their employers will help them do it.
UW Health now offers apprenticeship options for 17 professions, including surgical techs, pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists and registered nurses. Apprentices pay nothing for their course work, and they get paid to be in class.
To date, more than 1,000 apprentices have graduated.
Bridgett Willey, who oversaw the launch of those apprenticeships, said they’ve helped fill a critical gap. Wisconsin colleges alone just aren’t graduating enough students to meet the needs of the three major health systems in southern Wisconsin, Willey said.
The popular programs, which attract far more applicants than they can accommodate, have helped the company fill entry-level roles and hold onto existing staff. Before it began offering apprenticeships, as many as 3 in 10 positions for medical assistants, nursing assistants and pharmacy technicians were unfilled, Willey said. Today, it’s around 1 in 10.
“We’ve increased our supply by growing our own and training our own folks,” Willey said.
UW Health isn’t the only health system trying this model. Apprenticeships, once a rarity in health care, have become increasingly common at hospitals and clinics nationwide.
But offering this kind of on-the-job training isn’t always easy. Now, UW Health plans to use what it’s learned to help other states overcome the financial and bureaucratic barriers that can stand in the way. In May, the health system announced it created a separate company called WorkForward to help health systems and state agencies elsewhere set up apprenticeships. Willey, who directs that new project, thinks it’s the first such initiative by a U.S. health care company.
The health care apprenticeship surge
Historically, apprenticeships have been a key on-ramp to technical trades like plumbing and carpentry, allowing trainees to earn as they learn.
Now, apprenticeships are flourishing in U.S. hospitals and clinics, too. In just five years, the number of registered apprentices in the health care field has grown by more than 40%, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, as employers have expanded existing programs and others have started new ones.
Stethoscopes are pictured at UW Health on July 16, 2026, in Madison, Wis. UW Health started its apprenticeship program in 2018. To date, more than 1,000 apprentices have graduated. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
The boom comes as demand for health care workers has shot up across the country, triggered by the growing needs of an aging population and a wave of longtime health care workers retiring. By 2038, the country will be short about 109,000 registered nurses, 61,000 physical therapists, 33,000 pharmacy technicians and 13,000 respiratory therapists, according to projections by the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.
Meanwhile, vocational and on-the-job training is becoming increasingly popular across the board, said Susan Skillman, senior principal research scientist at the University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies.
“Apprenticeships in general are growing,” Skillman said. “We’re kind of in that place in the nation where the pendulum is moving away from four-year college degrees.”
Staff seize opportunity to advance
Some health apprenticeships last months while others last years. At UW Health, apprentices training to become medical assistants finish in 10 months while future registered nurses train for four years.
No matter the length or industry, all apprenticeships involve a combination of on-the-job training and classroom instruction. In the case of Wisconsin’s registered apprentices, who are approved through the state’s Department of Workforce Development, employers must pay apprentices for the time they spend in class. In some cases, the employer pays for the apprentices’ school costs, too.
At UW Health, the employer covers tuition. The health system’s staff also coordinate the apprentices’ work and school schedules to avoid conflicts.
Violet LaClair practices drawing blood from a mannequin arm while Lisa Fahey, manager of Ambulatory Apprenticeships, observes. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
Those were big selling points for Brianna Matheson, 35, who had worked as a medical assistant for 12 years when she learned last spring that UW Health was starting a three-year surgical tech apprenticeship. She’d spent time in the operating room before, and she liked helping with clinical procedures.
“I was just ready for something more,” Matheson said. “I was in clinics for so long, doing the same thing for so long. I wanted to learn again, be a student again, and be a novice.”
When the application opened, she was the first to apply.
“I had kind of given up on the idea of going back to school because I, like so many others, need full-time income, and I didn’t really want to give up all of my free time to work full time and go to school in the evenings and weekends,” said Matheson, who now processes and delivers supplies to the operating room at Madison’s University Hospital.
Not only does she not pay tuition, but the Department of Workforce Development offers a stipend for scrubs, reimburses mileage to and from school, and even covers some daycare costs for apprentices with kids, Matheson said.
The position also let Matheson keep her prior $25 hourly wage, reflecting the raises she’d earned during more than a decade on the job. When Matheson graduates in May 2028, she’ll earn surgical tech wages, which range from around $30 to $44 an hour, according to current UW Health job listings.
“I would not have been going back to school at this point in life to pursue this without the support of specifically the apprenticeship program that UW Health is offering,” Matheson said. “I wouldn’t have done it on my own.”
Apprenticeships attract new job applicants
Offering apprenticeships could help health systems draw entry-level job applicants like 25-year-old DeForest native Alex Lippman.
Lippman trained as a certified nursing assistant in high school, then worked at a skilled nursing facility in Madison. He started college at Arizona State University with plans to become a doctor, but moved back to Wisconsin when his grandmother fell ill in his sophomore year. He wanted to continue his education but figured he’d missed his chance.
Then, in 2023, UW Health announced it was starting the state’s first apprenticeship for registered nurses. That apprenticeship, like all of UW Health’s multiyear apprenticeships that lead to degrees, are open only to employees who’ve worked for the system for at least six months.
“I had a plan of trying to get into this program because going back to school on my own was no longer feasible,” Lippman said. He got a job as a certified nursing assistant and began the apprenticeship the next year.
Today he takes classes at Madison College and works three night shifts a week caring for patients with brain and spine injuries in University Hospital’s neuro intensive care unit. He’s on track to graduate in 2028.
Violet LaClair works three days per week as a medical assistant in a UW Health clinic, where she gets patients situated, takes blood pressure, flushes ears and more. “I can pretty much do anything the doctor asked me to,” she said. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
UW Health’s shorter training programs, meanwhile, are open to new applicants as well as current employees. Already, some have finished one and moved onto another, looking to advance their careers, Willey said.
“What we’re seeing is that people come in through one of our entry-level (apprenticeship) programs like medical assistant or nursing assistant, get their feet under them working in that capacity, and then now they’re applying for our degreed registered apprenticeship programs,” Willey said.
This isn’t the first time the company has built its own pipeline of health care workers. In 2013, Willey started a program called Health Occupations and Professions Exploration, or HOPE, where high school students spend a Saturday learning to do CPR, place a breathing tube in a mannequin, and more. The goal, Willey said, is to show students the range of careers available in health care. The program has trained about 6,500 students.
How much can the model grow?
Apprenticeships offer a unique way to address workforce shortages and help employees move up on the job, said Andy MacCracken, who coordinates health workforce planning for North Carolina at the NC Center on the Workforce for Health. That, he said, is one reason the number of apprentices and apprenticeships in the health care field has soared in recent years.
Still, he said, it’s not clear exactly how much of the health worker shortage can be solved through apprenticeships.
“We need to have a realistic view about what we’re actually aiming for when deploying apprenticeships as a solution,” MacCracken said. “I think apprenticeships are a really helpful tool in the toolbox. They’re not the only one.”
One challenge: It’s expensive to pay the clinical staff needed to supervise apprentices, so it can be hard for health system leaders to make the business case to their boards. Even health systems that embrace apprenticeships may not be able to accept as many apprentices as they’d like.
UW Health pays for its apprenticeship program with a mix of its own funds, private donations and public funds, though Willey said the latter is usually only available for starting up a new program.
Mannequin arms wait for UW Health staff to practice drawing blood on July 16, 2026, in Madison, Wis. UW Health created a company called WorkForward in May to help health care systems and state agencies build their own apprenticeship programs. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
Still, there are always far more applicants than openings. When the registered nursing apprenticeship launched in 2023, 200 employees applied for 16 slots. Last year, 70 people applied for 40 medical assistant apprenticeships.
Another challenge: Each state has its own laws about what counts as an apprenticeship and what standards an employer must meet when offering one. Likewise, the regulations for each profession may vary from state to state too. And then there are the accrediting agencies that approve educational programs, which are still getting used to the idea that students might get paid for their clinical training hours.
Willey said WorkForward will publish research on apprenticeship approaches that work, lobby for resources to support such programs and help other states identify potential funding sources. The company is a nonprofit, she said, which will apply for private and public grants. It will not receive direct funding from UW Health.
Currently, she said, WorkForward is working in Massachusetts with Tufts Medicine and Mass General Brigham — the state’s largest health care employer — and 12 of the state’s community and technical colleges.
“It would be great if we could take the solutions that we’ve built and spread (them at) scale across the U.S. … Health care continues to be a driver of new jobs for the U.S. economy,” Willey said, “and we have an aging population who needs more care, and so we need to be addressing these things now.”
MacCracken said he hasn’t heard of another health care employer taking on this role, but he thinks it makes sense, as employers may be more willing to listen to other employers.
In North Carolina, he said, he’s already seen how a few model programs can pave the way for others.
“I think because of the successes of some of the early adopters who have put these programs in action, we’re seeing great results, and so that’s helping inspire more action and scalability and replication.” MacCracken said.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
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