The Apprentice-Mentor Approach for a Career in Film TV and Radio or Anything

In my book, 25 Ways to Make College Pay Off: Advice for Anxious Parents from a Professor Who's Seen It All, I suggested that students should look for special training programs outside of their college like Dale Carnegie Training. I then went on to fantasize by writing, “if students could build their own bundles of courses and not worry about degrees, they would be better off.” The other day that I discovered that what I fantasized actually exists.

An organization called the Apprentice-Mentor Association runs a program called, Get a Mentor. The program helps students to get the education they need for a career they want without going to college. The mentor personally guides the student’s education primarily through experience he or she arranges, as well as through specific course manual work augmenting the hands on lessons. The training is individualized and flexible.

Get a Mentor provides one-on-one training for careers in (1) film/video production, (2) recording/sound engineering and (30 radio/TV Broadcasting. It was started by Phillip Trout, co-founder of the Columbia School of Broadcasting. With 50 years of experience working with those interested in pursuing careers in arts and entertainment, he believes that educating through apprenticeships is by far the most effective approach.

The program is simple. People apply and Phillip finds them a mentor who gives them an unpaid apprenticeship. Phillip thoroughly interviews the applicant to make sure the commitment, focus and capability are there. Ideally, when the mentor thinks the student is ready, he hires him and helps him find a job. According to Phillip, 100% of those who finish get a job in the career field they want. About 80% finish. Check out the site to see how it works. I provide no guarantees that Get a Mentor is as good as it sounds but from my study of the web site and an extensive interview with Phillip, it sounds like the real deal.

Applicants range in age from 16-69 and pay a one-time fee of approximately $6000. The mentor gets half and the organization gets the other half to cover advertising and administrative expenses. Obviously, Phillip makes virtually no money for himself on this. He does it because he wants to help people find a career that matches their passion without being sidetracked by the 40 courses, many of which are on unrelated subjects and an enormous debt.

The program is specialized to the film/video, recording/music, and radio/TV broadcasting fields. It is primarily related to technical training, but the apprenticeship program teaches most of the professional skills I advocate in my books. It also builds character and allows students to explore a career that they think they want. If you read the testimonies on the web site, you will see that the graduates of the program move into jobs, many of which are technical but some of which lead to general filmmaking and script writing.

Or if you are a want-a-be film maker, you could do what one of my students did. He received his four year degree from the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications and moved to L.A. without a job. He called me six month later to tell me excitedly that he was up for a dog walking job with a famous director. He submitted his resume and competed with three others to get the job. I am not sure if he got it. Apparently, dog walking can lead to a mentorship relationship, probably not with the Director, but with one of his staff.

I am not criticizing this student. He didn’t make a mistake doing a four year degree at Syracuse University because when he came to college he had no idea what he wanted to do and he only decided at the end of his sophomore year to enter the program in television, radio and film. He wasn’t focused and would not even have applied to the Get a Mentor Program if he had known about it before his junior year.

What lesson can we draw from the existence of the Get a Mentor program? First, for those who have a clear field interest, four years of college is not necessary. Apprentice training beats assembly line smorgasbord coursework hands down.

Second, lack of focus makes it difficult to take advantage of a program like this. An undergraduate education may be a way to find focus, although I am not sure it is the optimal way. The 120 hours of incoherent coursework just as often slows down the focusing process. Students naively think that the coursework exposes them to the real world when most coursework without a field work component only exposes them to theoretical views of professional scholars.

Third, the mentor-apprentice approach not only is cheaper, it is more flexible. The program has been successful with people from 16 to 69, some of which are in college and some of which are holding down a full time job. To complete the program, the student in effect has to make room for a part-time job spread over time or for a full time job taking no more than a year.

Now the big questions are? What other programs could be run this way. And how many Phillip Trout’s are out there to coordinate them? I’m open for nominations.