...narrowing the set of skills students are encouraged to master last year as a possible way to expand the pool of collision repair training programs in schools, particularly at the high school level.

Gene Lopez, who co-chaired the committee at that time, said 25 years of industry surveys conducted by the Collision Repair Education Foundation have shown those top five tasks shops expect an entry-level technician to be able to perform have remained remarkably consistent over that quarter century.

Gene Lopez

The best training programs produce entry-level workers with these skills and far more, and that shouldn’t change, Lopez suggested. But a new high school program that focuses on just those five, along with some training in safety, employability and soft skills, would have far “less of a burden on budget requirements for equipment, tools and materials in these high schools,” Lopez said.

It also could expand the pool of potential instructors qualified to teach such programs, leading to “a renewed acceptance of collision technology in our high school systems,” he said.

Lopez said too often schools offer training “that’s a mile wide but only an inch deep.”

“They can’t spend enough time on those top five skill sets because they’re introducing welding, frame straightening and estimating, which really isn’t a need for an entry-level technician,” he said.

But adding more training programs, even if they just focus on the “keystone of learning in collision repair,” could introduce more employable entry-level workers to the industry.