I feel like this article hits on a good observation but draws the wrong conclusion. Education may have very well come to underemphasize practice. However, I think that a pure learning by doing approach throws the baby out with the bathwater. It's also not what I've observed in my (admittedly limited) experience with apprenticship:
I worked as a field service engineer setting up servers and similar systems for a while. The place I was sent wasn't a union job but many of the workers were from the local union. I was very impressed with the apprentices. They would work half their week at our site and the other half attended training at the union hall. It seemed to work well for everyone: they seemed to learn a lot, the union developed it's next generation, and we effectively got an extra worker for half of every week.
It would be interesting to see a model like (half on the job and half in the classroom) that applied to more professions. E.g. in programming, universities seem to neglect the practice while bootcamps seem to neglect the theory.
I worked as a field service engineer setting up servers and similar systems for a while. The place I was sent wasn't a union job but many of the workers were from the local union. I was very impressed with the apprentices. They would work half their week at our site and the other half attended training at the union hall. It seemed to work well for everyone: they seemed to learn a lot, the union developed it's next generation, and we effectively got an extra worker for half of every week.
It would be interesting to see a model like (half on the job and half in the classroom) that applied to more professions. E.g. in programming, universities seem to neglect the practice while bootcamps seem to neglect the theory.