Fuck AI

Forgetting the handwave of LLMs and AI - this is a classic problem for a long time. Apprenticeships have existed for a long long time, and the problem of needing skilled labour in the future, but only having unskilled students now is an old one.

In a sense, she's right. Companies need to be compensated somehow to take on apprentices - otherwise you just intern at a company, take way more resources in training than benefit you provide, and then you might fuck off to a competitor all trained up.

But this doesn't have to be "pay for internship" (which is essentially what a trade school is anyway - "you mean I pay money to do welding?", "Yes because you do it so badly at first that you have to do it on practice metal and it's totally unusable and we have teachers helping you practice until they say you're good enough"). This could be making agreements to stay on after your training period, or join a body of some sort that you pay dues towards that sort of acts as insurance against this sort of thing, and the body handles the risk of your training (i.e. a plumbers union or some shit).