With college-loan debt making many rethink the country's college-for-all mindset, apprenticeships are becoming more attractive. Before the pandemic, the number of people starting apprenticeships had more than doubled over the previous 10 years. That progress stalled during COVID's height, but data for 2021, the most recent available, show that apprenticeship starts had rebounded to near the 2019 peak. Before the pandemic, new apprenticeships in non-construction fields had risen to 41 percent of all apprenticeship starts in 2019, from 26 percent in 1999, as reported through the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Database System. The style and length of apprenticeships is also changing. Some of these new apprenticeships are adapting traditional European models, in which companies hire and train their apprentices, who also attend school part time. But some are using variations of a new approach, cast as "hire-train-deploy" by one key player, in which third-party intermediaries make apprentices their "product." These intermediary companies, both for-profit and nonprofit, have sprouted up in recent years to recruit, train, and match employees with other firms for a commission, functioning somewhat like a temp agency. Advocates have already started proposing ways to use more federal tax dollars to support training and apprenticeships, either through new taxes or by changing rules for existing funds.