There’s been lots of discussion over the last few years about steering young people away from vocational education and into four-year degrees. That has shortchanged a lot of students who frequently ended up spending too much money on an education that failed to deliver on a successful career.

Some of that has to do with the way people learn. Some folks can absorb everything books and classrooms have to offer, but others need to do things with their hands to really learn. At least that’s how the academics shape the difference. But I think there is a more important kind of learning that has been overlooked.

No matter how good you do in a classroom or how well you work with your hands in a school shop, the real career learning takes place on the job. I constantly hear shop owners tell me that they have better luck training new hires with little or no experience than they do with people who have come out of a two- or four-year academic program.

I’ve also been disheartened by stories of college “internships” in which students are little more than unpaid flunkies in some corporate setting with not much to show in real job experience at the end of the internship.

What’s really missing is the classic apprenticeship program in which people are paid to learn a job by doing real work and steadily taking on more responsibilities as they learn more skills. Usually that learning takes place in close proximity to industry veterans who share their experience with the newcomer, helping them grow in ways directly related to the work at hand.

I don’t care if we are talking about manufacturing, the trades, engineering, or business management, all of those careers would benefit from true apprenticeships, mentoring, and a clear career path, apprentice to journeyman to master.

No academic program I have ever heard of really teaches the “tricks of the trade” that every career is built on. The insiders’ secrets that can only be learned by doing. I was working as a reporter for a local newspaper when I was still in high school. When I announced that I would be leaving to attend college for journalism, the business manager of the paper gave me some advice I have never forgotten. “It’s great that you are going to college,” he said. “But you won’t really start learning about the newspaper business until the day you get back on the job.”

I had a great college experience with great teachers, but largely he was right. Perhaps more important than my journalism education was the business education I got starting two businesses that paid for my college degree but had nothing to do with journalism.

On-the-job training is the best training, and it pays dividends to both the new worker and the employer.