Electrical/Electronics Maintenance and Repair Technology at Bates Technical College

Bates Technical College's electrical maintenance program faces a significant transparency challenge—neither earnings nor debt figures are based on actual graduate outcomes from this school. Instead, we're looking at national typical values: around $45,000 in first-year earnings and $12,000 in debt. That debt estimate actually runs lower than both the state median ($16,602) and national median ($14,907), which could signal either genuinely affordable aid packages or simply sparse comparable data. The earnings figure sits at the national midpoint but slightly below what Perry Technical Institute reports for Washington graduates ($45,720).

The estimated 0.26 debt-to-earnings ratio suggests manageable repayment if these figures hold true—monthly payments would consume roughly 3-4% of gross income. But that's a meaningful "if" when you're making decisions without school-specific outcomes data. The fact that only 9% of students receive Pell grants is unusual for a technical college and might indicate the program primarily serves career-changers or working adults rather than traditional students needing aid.

The core issue here is making a roughly $12,000 investment based entirely on what similar programs produce elsewhere. If Bates consistently places graduates into Washington's electrical maintenance workforce at competitive wages, that's a reasonable bet. But you'd want to verify placement rates and starting wages directly with the school's career services office before enrolling, since the published data can't confirm what actually happens to their graduates.