Have you ever had your car break down and so you need it fixed? I once faced the same problem on a five hour road trip across Washington State. The person that came and rescued me was a mechanic who is trained to fix your car. Since we have so many cars out there on the roads, do we need people to design more cars or need people to fix the cars that are already out there? In general, we need more people to fix what the mechanical engineers design.
The difference between a mechanic and mechanical engineer is that engineers design and test new machines, while mechanics work on the machines they build when they need maintenance or break down. The more complicated the machines get, the need for more maintenance is required as there are more parts that need to work and mesh in a certain way. Think of how a BMW needs to get a tune up or it’s performance goes down in time and needs to be repaired as the pieces of the engine get a little out of alignment causing the issues in the car to happen. Freaking the driver of the car out as their relatively new cars performance goes down but because it needs a tune up.
In other words, we need more mechanics than engineers to balance mechanics to machines as we have about 41,310 workers to repair and maintain industrial machines. A way we can get more mechanics in the workforce is from the military. According to “Skills Learned in Army Recognized” (2004) “‘Army personnel are usually mature, responsible and have a level of experience that is intangible,’ says Brewer. ‘They are working on multi million dollar projects versus others who are just coming out of trade school.’” They already have done training and have plenty experience working on mechanical systems at a military standard. They have a feeling for what it means to be a mechanic in the workforce already, compared to one coming into school. This is an advantage as Clancy (2007) says, that cars are becoming more and more technologically advanced and it’s getting to the point where they are as complicated, wiring wise, as a fighter jet. So if they bring people from the military with the technical knowledge of military technology their shop will be able to run smoother and have higher quality staff. That are able to work on both old and new cars and be versatile.
If you aren’t in the military, or don’t have an interest in joining, there is still a solution to help you become a mechanic by a company paying your college tuition for you. The article by Lewis (2008) states that, In a program called T-Ten people can work at a Toyota dealership and have them pay for their school. They only make $12 an hour when they are in school but once they graduate they can earn $16 an hour. The thing that makes this program great is the fact that as they’re going to school you can earn your master mechanic certifications. When people have all eight of those done they end up earning around $30 an hour. Being able to make this much soon after college is a great draw to people as that can end up earning a $64,500 salary for the year. They don’t have any debt from college, have a job landed, and some Toyota dealership locations buy them a starter set of tools as well. “The beauty of the T-Ten program, says Snow, is that it pairs the student interns with master mechanics. They’re not on their own. They have someone overseeing their work and advising them,”(Lewis, 2008). They have members of the program learn in school as well as teaching them how to work on cars by taking them through the paces. Letting you bypass the usual one to two year wait of getting used to the workforce and being ready as soon as school is over. Letting you become an asset to the company as soon as you can.
Some people may say that being an engineer is better as you don’t get as dirty and can get paid more. From Landis (2013) Engineers that come out of their college with a Bachelor’s degree earn an average of $60,639 but with the debt that you get from engineering courses is it worth it. What most people don’t know is the amount of people that don’t finish schooling for engineering either because of the cost or because the work becomes to hard. According to Belasco (2018) ”The attrition rate for engineering students in unparalleled. A gulp-worthy 60% of freshmen engineering students eventually drop-out or change majors. Over 40% don’t even make it through year one”. With numbers like these it’s not hard to deny that an engineering degree is hard to get. So if 60% of people went and paid for expensive engineering classes when they don’t even finish the degree, leading them into debt for nothing.
There are internship opportunities available for engineers but the most common is a cooperative education where students work for six months and then study for six months (Landis, p.224). The down sides to this is that it will take you twice as long to finish your degree and that you are earning little to nothing for the work that you do. If you don’t do the six on and six off you can work part time while you are in school. The recommended amount of time to balance the work and school is; if you work 10 hours a week you can do a full load, 20 hours a week take 12 credits, and if you work 40 hours a week 8 credits (Landis, p. 224). Even doing this you wouldn’t earn that much money to pay for the expensive engineering college courses. You would have to take out loans or take on or to classes and try to work between 20 and 40 hours a week. Doing so would put you behind on schooling though as you would have to take classes for a longer amount of time.
If you were on the fence about being a mechanic or mechanical engineer, I hope you can see that the call of the mechanic work force is strong for new people and that there is multiple ways to bring you into the field. Be it saving and making money with T-Ten, or using previous military experience to land a job.
References
Belasco, A. (2018). “So you want to be an engineer…”. College Transitions.
https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/so-you-want-to-be-an-engineer/
Clancy, J. (2007). Education: high-flyers only, please: the motor industry needs to attract bright young things to service the complex cars of the future. Gale Business Insights: Global. http://bi.galegroup.com.bow.highline.edu/global/article/GALE%7CA163742468/7d354149a96d3b9e5e58d41e5d57e727?u=highlinecc
Landis, R. B. (2013) Studying engineering a road map to a rewarding career. 1-310.
Lewis, C. (2008). Auto shop internships turn out master mechanics. San Diego Business Journal. https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=ec9619eb-5d2b-45ba-b651-552c59a34d5b%40sdc-v-sessmgr04&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=35693385&db=b9h
“Occupational employment and wages, May 2017 49-9041 industrial machinery mechanics”. (2018). Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/oes499041.htm
“Skills learned in army recognized”. (2004). Motor Age, 123(8), 82. https://search-proquest-com.bow.highline.edu/docview/223208625?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo
Beginner Mechanic 