I hear you, and you know I agree with you on this point, but the naysayers (mostly employers, it seems) will shoot that down with, "We already know the apprenticeship model works, but we can't afford to implement it in a culture where the average American worker changes jobs every 6, 7, or 8 years. Essentially we'd be training our competitors, and we can't afford that."
I myself have benefited greatly from the apprenticeship model-- up until very, very recently (for example) there was no other way to become a land surveyor. You had to actually apprentice, in the formal sense, with a licensed professional to get on the career track and achieve the minimum level of years of experience and then sit for the licensure exam.
Why is apprenticeship so prevalent for that profession, compared to others which seem similar (at least to this outsider)? Is it the amount of hands-on field work? The number of potential students to support a classroom?
Because land surveying, educationally speaking, is a subset of civil engineering. The amount of field work is part of it as well. You can't learn how to conduct a property survey or boundary delineation without lots of field work. The other reason is that civil engineering is extremely regulated (another problem).
I myself have benefited greatly from the apprenticeship model-- up until very, very recently (for example) there was no other way to become a land surveyor. You had to actually apprentice, in the formal sense, with a licensed professional to get on the career track and achieve the minimum level of years of experience and then sit for the licensure exam.