BioNTech and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced they had jointly developed a COVID-19 vaccine that was 90 percent effective against the coronavirus in clinical trials. Although the vaccine is not approved or ready for distribution, Americans welcomed the news; the US has more than 10 million COVID-19 cases and almost 240,000 deaths.

After the announcement, BioNTech received international attention as an immigrant success story and a nimble scientific innovator. But BioNTech also offers a notable blueprint for other companies by taking a forward-looking approach to investing in the skills of its technical staff.

Like many German companies, BioNTech provides structured training to apprentices who master occupational skills through a combination of classroom training and on-the-job mentorship. Research suggests apprenticeship training increases workers’ wages and provides employers with a positive return on investment. Because apprentices learn on the job, they cultivate an understanding of how the material they learn in the classroom is applied in the real world. Apprentices are paid, so they don’t have to forgo earnings during education and training, and they don’t have to take on student debt for their studies.

Policymakers, companies, and workers in the United States have increasingly embraced the training model, but BioNTech’s program can provide lessons on apprenticeship’s potential to meet the needs of the scientific workforce in the US.

In proportion to its total workforce, BioNTech hires a large number of apprentices, with its 2020 cohort of 14 apprentices accounting for 1 percent of the company’s total workforce. And this number does not include apprentices hired in previous years who are still employed and advancing through their training. The largest programs in the United States are also typically “group” programs jointly operated by a union and more than one employer. Any single employer participating in the large group apprenticeship programs would only be hiring a fraction of the total number of apprentices in that program. In general, American companies do not provide as many apprenticeship opportunities as their German counterparts of the same size.

Read the full article about apprenticeships by Daniel Kuehn at Urban Institute.