Column Volkswagen Has to Grow Its Own Technicians. Try Somebody for That.
A car company in Tennessee could not find enough people who could do skilled work with their hands, so it built a school and taught them itself. Twenty-seven graduated this year, and somebody should answer for why that was necessary.
Column August 8, 2026
Volkswagen went looking around Tennessee for people who could do difficult work with their hands. It could not find enough of them. So it built a school and taught them itself.
Henning Habicht, who runs Volkswagen Chattanooga Operations, put it plainly. "Such specialized training is hard to find so we have decided to develop our own talent." Hard to find. Not expensive. Hard to find. Somebody made an entire country's worth of skill hard to find, and I want them tried for it. Not scolded. Tried.
Here is what got scarce. Twenty-seven apprentices graduated this year with two-year degrees from a community college in Chattanooga. Classroom theory. Lab work. A full year on the job. Written and practical assessments they could fail. Every one of them got a conditional job offer from Volkswagen. Conditional. Read that again. They still have to earn it, which is more than the people who emptied the shop classes ever did.
The school is 15 years old and has graduated more than 200 apprentices. Volkswagen says nearly 90 percent stay through the first year. Olivia Mercer thinks a car is a policy outcome with wheels. A car is a thing somebody has to be able to fix.
Brian is 31. He leases a crossover with a CVT and I have forgiven him almost entirely. Twenty-seven people his age now know more about how a car gets built than I do, and not one of the cars in my garage will start.
A tribunal, then, for the trade that spent two generations teaching children that a wrench was a failure setting. Not a review. A tribunal. Volkswagen had to open a school because somebody sold the shop class for scrap, and every last one of them should have to say that to the 27. Under oath.
The VerdictVolkswagen US Media announced on Aug. 3, 2026, from Chattanooga, Tenn., that on July 30 Volkswagen Group of America recognized 27 Volkswagen Academy students who graduated this year with associate in applied sciences (A.A.S.) degrees from Chattanooga State Community College. The apprentices completed in-classroom theory, hands-on lab training, a year of on-the-job training, and written and practical assessments. Each graduate received a conditional job offer with Volkswagen in Chattanooga. The offers are conditional and nobody in this magazine reports that anyone was hired. The release names two different pairs of programs, one pair in the lede and a different pair four paragraphs later, and the two do not agree; no program name therefore appears in the headline, the dek, the caption or the copy. The graduate count, the degrees, the college, the conditional offers and the retention figures are contradicted nowhere and stand. The Academy was founded 15 years ago and more than 200 apprentices have graduated from it. Volkswagen states nearly 90% retention in the first year, which is a one-year figure, and over 60% retention in automotive manufacturing among graduates in their first 5 years, which is a five-year figure attached to the industry and not to Volkswagen's payroll. The two intervals are not interchangeable and neither is reported as company headcount. Separately, and not to be added to the above, Volkswagen's apprenticeship programs with Chattanooga State have 365 alumni to date, of whom 160 have become full-time employees at Volkswagen Chattanooga. That is a different program family from the more than 200 Academy graduates and the two populations do not sum. Troy Selberg, the U.S. Department of Labor's Director of Workforce Initiatives, spoke at the graduation on behalf of Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling; this magazine takes no position on any administration. Henning Habicht, Head of Volkswagen Chattanooga Operations, is quoted saying the company provides high-tech manufacturing jobs requiring significant training, that such specialized training is hard to find, and that Volkswagen has decided to develop its own talent. 'Manufacturing athletes' is Volkswagen's phrase and is not adopted here. The release's sentence about what the sponsored PhD students developed ends mid-clause and states nothing; nobody here finishes it. Nobody at this desk was in Chattanooga, attended the ceremony, or has seen the plant, the labs or the graduates.
Editorial disclosure: Volkswagen sent Drive Observer a wooden crate of four hundred practice welds, each a two-inch steel coupon lapped onto another and graded in grease pencil, with a note explaining that these are the ones that failed. Per our strict ethical policy, we do not let this influence our coverage.
