Lee's Summit, Mo. -- Longview Community College, which opened in 1969, continues to offer both students interested in joining the automotive service industry and professionals in the industry a variety of training options.
    The core of the school's automotive programs is its General Automotive Technology Program, which averages about 140 students a year, said Stan Abrahamson, director of Automotive Technology.  Students in the general program can earn one of two associate degrees, receive a certificate of training, transfer their credits to a bachelor's degree program in the field, or just take the portions of the program that interest them, he said.    "I think that if more parents and educators realized that there was a four-year option, we would get more A and B students looking into this industry as an option," Abrahamson said, noting that the school works closely with colleges in Pittsburg, Kan., and Warrensburg, Mo., when students are interested in a four-year degree.
    The first of the program's associate degrees is intended for students whose intention is to go on to become a technician and includes all of the program's automotive offerings plus 18 hours of general requirements, Abrahamson said.  The second offering is made up of about half automotive classes and half general requirements, he said, and is primarily designed for students who intend to work in the automotive industry in roles such as parts personnel or factory representatives.
    Abrahamson said only about five students complete an associate's degree annually.  Most complete the automotive courses but not the general requirements needed for the degree, he said.
    "When you are graduating just five students a year with a degree, it tells me that degrees aren't really the measurement that the industry is using for a technician -- it's whether or not they can do the work," he said.
    In addition to its general automotive repair program, Longview also offers the General Motors Automotive Service Educational Program (ASEP) and Ford's Automotive Student Service Educational Training (ASSET), Abrahamson said.  About 15 new students enter each of these two-year programs each year, he said, resulting in about 30 students being in each at any one time.
    ASEP and ASSET students alternate between eight weeks of learning at the schools and 12 weeks of working in the service department at a dealership under the mentorship of an experienced technician. 
    Dealerships pay students for the time they are working, but the students still pay for schooling in most cases, Abrahamson said.
    Because the students are alternating between working full time and going to school full time, they graduate from the Ford and GM programs after two years with an associate's degree as well as having about a year's worth of experience, Abrahamson said.
    The qualification levels for students entering the manufacturer programs are higher, Abrahamson said, requiring college levels for reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Students that test lower are able to enter the general program by agreeing to take remedial classes in problem areas, he said.  Students in the manufacturer programs are also committing to go straight through a two-year program and then are expected to go to work in a dealership, he said, so they need to be able to show they can afford to pay for the training.
    "We're asking 17- and 18-year-old kids to make a decision about the next five years of their life," Abrahamson said, "including basically taking a double college load in order to finish the training in two years."
    The three programs split time between three service shops, which have five bays each, and classrooms at Longview's 30,000-square-foot automotive technology facility.  One of the advantages of having the three programs in one facility is that it allows the sharing of equipment between the programs to ensure that students learn on the latest equipment, Abrahamson said, although he noted that in the case of GM ASEP, some equipment is exclusive to that program.
    The school is equipped with seven GM Tech II scanners, seven Ford NGS scanners, one OTC Genesys, four OTC Nemisys scanners, as well as two Snap-on scanners, a Vantage, and a Vantage Pro, he said.
    The school also has an agreement with Hunter to act as a local training center, which means that it has many current pieces of that company's equipment that students are also able to use, Abrahamson said.
    The GM Service Technical College also uses the facility to train its dealer technicians, and it serves as an ACDelco training facility, he said.
    In addition to offering equipment and instructor training, the partnerships with the vehicle and equipment manufacturers also add credibility to the school's automotive programs and help defray the cost of offering what has historically been an expensive program, Abrahamson said.
    While all of the students in the GM ASEP and Ford ASSET program must have jobs with dealerships before they can begin training, the students in the general automotive program also have placement rates that average well above 90 percent, Abrahamson said.
    "There are some awfully good jobs out there going begging," he said.  "There are a lot of people who would love to get our general students working for them."
    Abrahamson said that each year he has a handful of repair shops from the area that approach him about hiring students to work part time or after they graduate and that he is always happy to post openings on the school's bulletin board.
Abrahamson said he thinks that the students that do the best, and the ones that the shops end up being the happiest with, are teamed up with an experienced technician who wants to help mentor them.
    "We have always said that the best that we can be expected to do is to turn out an entry-level technician," he said.  "Even with all of the modern equipment that we are training them on, entry level is what should be expected.  They've probably seen it, touched it, and even used it, but in no way can they be considered proficient until they have had time to get experience in a real shop.
    "I tell these guys that it is going to take them two years with us and another three years in a shop before you can consider yourself a full-fledged technician," Abrahamson said.