The Silver Creek native loves to get his hands greasy on a small engine or tuning up a car, fixing anything and everything that isn’t working quite right.
The knack for the mechanical led Czarnick to AKRS Equipment in Osceola, where he joined the Jump Start Scholarship program, which provides high school graduates a clear pathway to a career as a service technician.
Along with up to 100 percent tuition reimbursement, a signing bonus, money for tools and the opportunity to work while he pursued a degree at Southeast Community College in Milford, the Jump Start program guaranteed Czarnick something other degree programs cannot.
Haden Czarnick of Silver Creek, a service technician at AKRS Equipment Solutions in Osceola, is one of a growing number of young Nebraskans who have secured high-paying jobs long before they earn a college degree as businesses across the state seek to fill in-demand positions with high-skilled workers.
“You’re guaranteed a job right out of college,” Czarnick said. “That’s what the nice thing is.”
Czarnick, 20, started working at the AKRS dealership before he started college, earning $15 per hour. When he started taking classes in Milford, that hourly wage jumped to $18 per hour.
Beginning in May, Czarnick is now a full-time John Deere service technician making $22 per hour, using the skills he learned at SCC to repair combines, tractors and a slew of other agricultural equipment brought into the dealership.
He’s part of a growing number of young Nebraskans who have secured high-paying jobs long before they earn a college degree as businesses across the state seek to fill in-demand positions with high-skilled workers.
Haden Czarnick of Silver Creek opens the socket drawer of his toolbox on Friday at AKRS Equipment Solutions in Osceola, where he works as a service technician. As a part of the AKRS Jumpstart Scholarship program, Czarnick was given up to $6,000 to start his tool collection.
Karl Eickhoff, the chair of SCC-Milford’s diesel technology program, said the number of what SCC refers to as “sponsored students” has steadily increased over the last decade as companies seek new ways to fill gaps caused by retirees or others who have left the workforce.
The number of students enrolled at SCC with the backing of companies has “really ramped up in the last five years,” Eickhoff added, coinciding with a change to SCC’s academic calendar from quarters to semesters, as well as the opening of new facilities for students.
"We've got a lot of technicians that are going to start retiring in the next five to 10 years, so I don't see the demand dropping between now and then," Eickhoff said.
SCC-Milford has seen enrollment in its John Deere Technology program, which leads students like Czarnick into careers as service technicians, jump by nearly 50 percent over that time.
According to data submitted to the Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, the number of credit hours taken by SCC students in the John Deere program grew from about 1,900 in the 2019-20 school year to more than 2,700 in 2022-23.
Over that same period, the number of students graduating grew from 24 to 42. According to SCC, the average starting salary of those graduates is $44,000.
The number of student credit hours in the diesel-ag equipment program reached a five-year high in 2022-23, according to SCC reports, while the number of graduates has also started trending upward as more companies boost their recruitment efforts.
Haden Czarnick of Silver Creek works on the air conditioning unit of a 8300 John Deere tractor on Friday at AKRS Equipment Solutions in Osceola. Czarnick started working at AKRS before he started college at Southeast Community College in Milford and now works full time repairing combines, tractors and other agricultural equipment.
Brayden Geiger, who will be a second-year student at SCC-Milford this fall, started on his journey to becoming a diesel mechanic before his senior year at Elkhorn High School when he was taken on as an intern by NMC Cat in Omaha.
The internship, which Geiger characterized as “almost like a trial period,” led to him joining the Full College Scholarship program, which will pay the cost of his tuition, fees and books, as well as up to $12,000 in tools.
All the 18-year-old, who also received a Walter Scott Pathways Scholarship that will cover the cost of room and board, has to give back to NMC Cat in return is two years working as a certified diesel mechanic — a position where SCC graduates see an average starting salary of nearly $53,000.
“Companies like this are looking everywhere they possibly can for people,” he said. “There’s a real need for mechanics, a need for the trades, and they are willing to pay a lot of money to find people who want to do something like this.”
Eickhoff said demand for highly trained workers from programs like SCC’s has driven to more companies — either large-scale operations like AKRS and NMC or even some independent shops — competing for top talent in the state.
Hayden Rohs of Wichita, Kan., replaces frame bolts on a 3020 John Deere tractor on Friday at AKRS Equipment Solutions in Osceola.
“Pretty much any dealership from Grand Island east is offering some sort of a sponsorship program right now,” Eickhoff said.
And even those who don’t matriculate into SCC’s John Deere or diesel-ag equipment programs with a sponsorship — like Czarnick and Geiger — often pick one up along the way, he added.
About one in five students start in the SCC program with a company backing them; Eickhoff said between 75 percent and 80 percent graduate with a sponsor that recruited them at a career fair on campus or other effort.
Jeremy Vrana, who oversees career development for John Deere Platte Valley in Wahoo, said programs like SCC have become “a premium option” to develop technicians with the skills to work in what has proven to be a tight labor market.
“Almost every dealership would take two technicians right away if they could,” said Vrana, who said Platte Valley has hired nearly 40 technicians from the SCC program over time. “We’ve had the best luck with ‘grow your own.’”
Graduates of the SCC program start off as certified technicians, setting the groundwork for them to advance to a diagnostic service technician position within a year, Vrana said.
Haden Czarnick of Silver Creek plugs the hydraulic hoses of a baler into a 6145M John Deere tractor on Friday at AKRS Equipment Solutions in Osceola.
That allows them to specialize in certain products and advance their careers further within the company, he added, which in turn creates a need for new certified technicians at the dealership, and the cycle repeats itself.
“If you want to be an ag service technician, you shouldn’t have to pay for your school right now,” Vrana said.
With Nebraska’s unemployment rate hovering consistently around 2.5 percent, which ranks it among the lowest in the U.S., other industries have started to follow the lead of ag equipment and diesel truck companies in offering to sponsor students.
On Monday, Tallgrass Energy, which employs more than 100 people in Nebraska, many of them as technicians and operators of the company’s 2,500 miles of pipeline, will announce the Tallgrass Tech Scholars Program.
The initiative will provide $500,000 through 2030 to cover the cost of tuition, books and on-campus housing for students who apply and enroll in SCC’s Energy Generation Operations Program, which has already been a rich recruiting target for Tallgrass Energy.
Crystal Heter, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the company with more than 10,000 employees nationwide, said Tallgrass Tech Scholars will emerge with skill sets that allow them to start beyond entry level positions.
Hayden Rohs of Wichita, Kan., replaces frame bolts on a 3020 John Deere tractor on Friday at AKRS Equipment Solutions in Osceola. AKRS offers a Jump Start Scholarship program, which provides high school graduates a clear pathway to a career as a service technician, offering 100 percent tuition reimbursement.
“We really need to get a jump on bringing these individuals into these critical positions,” Heter said. “We started recruiting out of (SCC) quite some time ago, but we also looked at how we could accelerate that approach.”
Heter said that in addition to being prepared to join Tallgrass Energy as an operator or technician at a starting salary of $65,000 or higher, graduates would also be qualified to work for the company’s subsidiaries, partners or customer facilities across Nebraska and beyond.
“It’s really an easy choice to build upon what’s been a successful approach for us,” she said.
SCC Vice President for Instruction Joel Michaelis said he doesn’t see the trend of companies luring potential employees through offers to pay for them to get a two-year associate’s degree before guaranteeing them a job going away any time soon.
“How much is lost when you’re not able to take on a client or take on a project?” Michaelis said. “If you tell a customer ‘it’s going to be three weeks before I can get to it,’ they are going to go down the street to the next place.
“All of a sudden, it looks like a very smart decision fiscally to do it this way.”
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