Career shift: Local auto technician programs are growing and overflowing

Students at South Seattle Community College get a lesson in transmissions. (Photo by Cody Ellerd)

James Lemley is doing it because he has always liked taking things apart to see how they work. Melissa Foster has beauty school as a backup plan, but she's doing it because what she truly wants to do is work for NASCAR. Chad Sarbiewski has little to say about why he's studying to be an auto technician, but two words sum it up just fine: "It pays."

Whatever their reasons, the students now enrolling in automotive training programs are filling the Seattle area's community colleges and vocational schools beyond capacity, and the timing suggests that, yes, it's the economy.

"I've been a teacher long enough that I've been through a few up and down cycles," says Nolan Koreski, an automotive instructor who has been teaching at Lake Washington Technical College in Kirkland for the past 19 years. "When this happens, people want to get into something they perceive as more steady."

When IT was the hot field in the 1990s, interest in LWTC's automotive program was so low that it was in danger of being phased out. But the 2008-09 school year marked a reversal, and Koreski expects to see the upsurge continue as unemployment benefits and severance packages run out.

The median hourly wage of auto technicians and mechanics in Washington is $19.31, or around $37,000 annually, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department. And with consumers now keeping their old cars longer before buying new ones, these workers' services are in demand.

What's more, the ever-growing complexity of automotive systems, fuel technologies and electronics are changing the image of what it means to be a mechanic. "Parents used to say, 'Johnny can't do anything else -- he should be a mechanic,' " says Don Schultz, program director of Shoreline Community College's Professional Automotive Training Center. "Those days are over. These students wear surgical gloves when they work on cars. They're not getting their hands dirty."

K'Lynn Jackson practices her filing with another student in Intro to Auto Tech at South Seattle Community College. (Photo by Cody Ellerd)

Shoreline's program has close relationships with area auto dealerships which sponsor students and guarantee them a job once they finish. Schultz says the school has been turning away applicants for some time now, but a $4.2 million expansion now under way will allow it to accept 30 percent more than before.

Students say they're thrilled that their classroom is a place where they use both their brains and their hands. K'Lynn Jackson, 26, is in her first quarter at South Seattle Community College. She attended film school and beauty school before enrolling there.

"It's really cool," she says. "It's only been a few weeks, and already I've learned so much more than I have anywhere else."