George Klein is on deadline. His career as a small engine instructor is on the line – but he’s more concerned about the health of the program he founded six years ago at Walla Walla Community College, Walla Walla, Wash. Enrollment is down, state budgets are down and support for his program – which depends on how many students sign up for the course – is also down, with only seven filled seats as of late March.
Klein isn’t unique. Many service technician instructors are watching their classrooms thin out as states decrease budgets and parents and school counselors encourage four-year “professional” post-graduate plans over vocational courses with inferior reputations. Image blocks support for small engine programs, and low enrollment puts these programs at prime risk when schools must cut curriculum to lower their budgets, explains Jim Roche, executive director, Equipment & Engine Training Council (EETC), Hartland, Wis.
“(Public high schools) are at a mad dash to build up their curriculums so more students who graduate have the ability to attend four-year schools, and they cut the industrial courses,” Roche notes.
Meanwhile, more complicated technology and advanced tools require technician training. Technician jobs in outdoor power equipment (OPE) dealerships are plentiful and skills are in demand, but still, teachers like Klein can’t find students.
PERCEPTION & REALITY. “How can a program that has all this going for it still suffer problems of low enrollment and misconceptions?” Klein asks. “If such a need truly exists for technicians, then where are the students?”
According to EETC, students are there, but they aren’t encouraged to pursue technician jobs in the OPE industry. The three prime blockers are mothers, fathers and high school guidance counselors, whose industry perceptions are stuck in the “old days.”
“The images that come to mind most for these people is an image of an older, retired man working out of his garage on a lawn mower,” Klein describes, adding that the auto industry cleaned up its image years ago with certification programs and standards, similar to what EETC is attempting today with its certification programs and education efforts. The OPE industry just got a late start, he says.
“If you say to a high school student, ‘Would you like to be an auto mechanic?’ they have a clear picture of what it is and what they do,” Klein points out. “They see a certified person with a patch on their shoulder. In outdoor power, they see an old man in a garage working on a push mower from Sears.”
Perception pushes students away from OPE.This image is compounded with threats to remove grant programs that keep industrial technology programs alive, such as governmental Perkins Grants that help schools purchase engines, machines and tools for their classrooms. John Chocholak, education chairman of the EETC, reports on legislature filtering through California courts that would further inhibit industrial tech programs from receiving the support they need to survive.
In an announcement, Chocholak wrote, “Legislation is making way through Congress that will permit the governor of a state to take funding without limits from the WIA partner programs at the state level to be used for one-stop infrastructure costs. This means these funds will be used for administrative costs and not services. Perkins funds could be wiped out and used for everything but ‘hands-on’ instruction.”
This funding pays for classroom tools and the essential budget dollars that colleges like Klein’s depend on to pay salaries and fund technical curriculum. The result of these diminishing funds is frustrating since the industry desperately needs technicians to manage the volume of equipment customers bring in OPE shops for repair, Klein notes.
In his case, college administrators realized state funding probably would decrease at least 2 percent, and the administration receives only 55 percent of its funding from the state as it is, he says. The other 45 percent stems from industry support, which Klein started to gain this February by writing to magazines, contacting manufacturers and local high school teachers, and alerting the EETC.
Meanwhile, the market is supple and the jobs are there, the industry needs technicians. “Many businesses are struggling with their work loads due to lack of qualified technicians, or they are overwhelmed trying to fulfill the increase in demand,” he describes.
So, Klein won’t give up. He needs 15 students by the end of April, or his program is gone. This is more than double what he started the program with in 1998, and since then he has earned school accreditation through the EETC, adding value to the program. He has seen the classroom fluctuate – a few years ago he enrolled 13 – but the last two years have been slow. Like many instructors busy in the classroom, he hasn’t had time to advertise to local high schools or send out flyers promoting his community college program, he explains. But now it’s crunch time.
“I will put every ounce of energy I have into keeping this program,” he affirms. Even if it costs him his job.
ASSEMBLING SUPPORT. Things have taken a turn for the better since February, for Klein at least. He is showing “positive progression,” in enrollment that buys him more weeks to find more students. Help from organizations like EETC and letters he sent to manufacturers and schools have paid off.
Pete Fernald, technical services and training manager for Shindaiwa, Tulatin, Ore., and Chuck Bontrager, manager, product training and education, MTD, Cleveland, Ohio, visited Walla Walla Community College, answering the administration’s questions regarding the OPE industry’s future. The college president and faculty want to make it work.
There was talk of scholarships, funding and support, and Klein thinks the situation is improving. But the school still needs to make ends meet, and enrollment will drive the ultimate decision. “We can’t change the whole world in one day,” he says, adding that perhaps he started late, but so far his efforts to advertise the opportunities present for students in the OPE industry have made an impression, if even a small one.
The job section on Klein’s Web site touches only the “pinhead of jobs out there in the power equipment market,” he adds. “If I included rental stores, landscape businesses, lawn and garden stores, parks and recreation departments, cities and municipalities, I could probably put up 500 jobs for the Northwest.”
This open market parallels the Bureau of Labor Statistics study published in the November 2001 Monthly Labor Review that projects service-producing jobs will make up 74.7 percent of employment distribution by 2010.
“The job market is incredible,” Klein remarks. “I really don’t ever have a problem placing a student.” For now, he just has to find people to place – and he is getting closer to the administration’s goal. Until then, he will keep talking, spreading the word about the industry’s potential, and he advises other industry members to do the same.
“Make visits to your local high schools, let them now what you as an industry member have to offer,” he stresses. “A single person cannot make a program survive.”
But a unified industry can.
This article appeared in the April 2003 issue of Commercial Dealer magazine. The author is Managing Editor of Commercial Dealer and can be reached at khampshire@commercialdealer.com.