Forward Observations: Shop Goes To College

25 March 2014

Rick Carter, Executive Editor

Matt Crawford’s excellent 2009 book Shop Class as Soulcraft offers an impassioned case for a return to the values once represented by public-school shop class. I read it recently thanks to my wife, who noticed it in the library of the high school where she teaches—a school, like many others in the U.S., that closed its first-rate shop program.

The book relates how Crawford’s circuitous career (he went from electrician to writer to motorcycle mechanic) taught him the value of hands-on work, and why it all began with shop. His opening snapshot of the afterlife of the lathes, table saws and other equipment that was discarded “when shop class started to become a thing of the past,” then offloaded to secondhand markets across the country, is a sobering symbol of a larger loss for America’s youth.

Shop was not a universal career-starter, of course, but it brought value by introducing a non-college option, something most of today’s public-school students, and many industrial workers, have missed. The good news today is that this void has not been ignored: The nation’s two-year community colleges are helping to fill it by re-imagining shop’s original mission as career training, shaped by and for manufacturers.

Educator and former MARTS presenter Mark Combs has been a part of this effort since 2008, working with manufacturers and faculty to create courses and schedules that accommodate the needs of both workers and community-college students interested in industrial careers. It began for Combs when he was Program Manager for Business Training at Parkland College, a two-year school in Champaign, IL. The nearby Kraft Foods operation asked if the school could train the plant’s workers to become maintenance technicians. The request led to a partnership with Kraft that exists to this day.

At the time, Parkland’s Industrial Technology program lacked the resources to meet Kraft’s needs, so Combs enlisted other local manufacturers with similar needs to join a training partnership. He then applied for and received a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. “This allowed the college to get new equipment and hire people to help train both incumbent workers and college students,” says Combs. The manufacturers also donated equipment, manufacturing expertise, served on curriculum advisory boards and covered half of their employees’ tuition. The other half was covered by the local workforce-investment agency.

Parkland’s courses filled quickly: 35 incumbent workers at first, says Combs, along with 45 full- and part-time college students, “most of whom were unaware that manufacturing employment paid so well and actually had career opportunities.”

Not everyone completed the program, but those who did went on to well-paying positions with Kraft or the other partners.

Though the original grant ended in 2012, it was designed so enrolled workers could continue training afterward. The last who signed on under the original funding will finish in 2015.

Combs, who now teaches part-time at Parkland, says the school has become an established training source for local manufacturers. “We have an Industrial Maintenance Technology Certificate for technicians that did not exist before, and over $750,000 of equipment purchased with grant money that is used in classes to help train maintenance technicians.” Those classes are offered on a regular basis, he says, and people are enrolling in them.

A similar situation may be underway at a community college near you. According to Combs, you’ll probably find the classes and programs there that can help train your workers. If not, he says, most faculty and department chairs are eager to hear what’s needed. These schools are aware of the skilled-labor shortage, and want to help address it. All you may have to do is ask. MT&AP

rcarter@atpnetwork.com