Well, as an employer of other glass artists I've never had an "apprentice" per se, but I have had many paid employees who had to be taught from scratch. If you, as an apprentice, have to PAY for an apprenticeship, then you are being robbed. In most big studios an apprentice is either working on a labor-for-studio-access barter or, at least, making minimum wage to open doors, take latte orders, and run bit & pontils. Any future "risk" the apprentice poses to the artist/employer is a risk that needs to be shouldered by the artist/employer. To be frank, I have little respect for artist/employers who take that position in the first place. First off, most experienced artist/employers know full well that any assistant who is worth his/her salt will inevitably learn what they can from you and then go off to do their own thing eventually. That's just the nature of the game. It's something that you have to accept as an employer if you want to hire good people. (The alternative is to hire crappy employees who never learn and never go away.) The best that you can do as an employer is to teach whatever you can to the best of your abilities and try to create a working atmosphere that people will want to stick around for. A good artistic partnership can grow naturally from a situation like that. Even if your employee/apprentice eventually leaves you for greener pastures you can still part on good terms and even benefit from having made that contact. In summary, I have NEVER asked anyone to pay ME to be my apprentice...that strikes me as haughty and I was turned-off by that kind of attitude when I was new to the glass scene.
If you are serious about glass, you would be better off moving to Seattle and getting a paying gig as a glassblowing assistant with one of the many studios there. Pick your favorite Seattle artist/studio and make friends with one of the crew...newbies are always hired based solely on personality and who they know in the network. They will start you with low pay and bullshit work, but if you stick with it and make some inroads with the staff, you can work your way up the food-chain. Personally, I tried the whole "apprenticeship" gig back in the 90's when I first caught the glass bug and it was not my cup-o-tea. It got real old real fast. But, hey...I'm impatient and I've always been a little too independent to enjoy making work for someone else. When you bust your rump for a couple of weeks in return for access to the hotshop and then get bumped from your blow-slot at the last minute, you start to rethink the whole labor/barter-apprenticeship deal. I wound up just biting the bullet and paying out-of-pocket for classes and blow-time at Pratt Fine Arts. I went on to do my own thing a LOT faster than I would have had I kept to the apprenticeship-track. After one year of classes and renting blow-slots I was picked up by a gallery and I never looked back. Long story short, apprenticeship is really not worth the hassle unless you can swing one with a big name like Martin Blank, Lino, or one of the other Pilchuck Legends. Having an apprenticeship like THAT on your resume carries a LOT of weight. But apprenticing for some Jane who slings beads and who maybe has a couple of year's head-start on you (at most) will be a waste of your time and energies. If you really want to be a glass artist for the rest of your life, spring for the classes. You can't skimp on your dreams, y"know?