In the first corporate-academic partnership of its kind, consumer goods manufacturer Unilever South Africa and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have announced a collaborative skills development programme that aims to provide promising engineering students with practical work experience and a premium academic qualification from one of the country’s leading tertiary institutions.

With only 40% of students that enrolled to study towards mechanical, industrial or aeronautical engineering degrees in South Africa going on to qualify, recent qualitative research at the Wits School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering revealed that low completion rates were primarily a result of insufficient funding, inadequate familial or social support and a lack of mentorship or exposure to industry to acquire practical skills and understanding.

“Students often can’t relate the engineering concepts we talk about [in lectures] to practical experience. This programme is aimed at addressing that, as it will show students how the practical world works and the concepts in academia will make sense . . . the benefits are enormous,” Wits School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering head Professor Robert Reid said at the launch of the programme last week.

As part of the flagship initiative, which was supported by the Chemical Industries Education & Training Authority, 30 Wits engineering students who had completed their second or third year of study would this year be employed full-time at Unilever’s new R1.4-billion Khanyisa plant, on Johannesburg’s East Rand.

The facility produced homecare liquids, such as Sunlight, Handy Andy and Domestos, using global manufacturing and packing technology.

The students would form part of the factory operations team for the duration of their year of employment, providing them with practical exposure to the production process and an opportunity to develop their technical and problem-solving skills.

Participating students, all of whom were required to complete a work-readiness programme to equip them with workplace skills and abilities, would also have the opportunity to engage and develop mentoring relationships with qualified engineers and professionals working in industry.

“In addition to the benefit of this practical work experience for the students, the programme will also provide our current operators, many of whom aspire to higher levels of technical qualification, with the opportunity to learn technical skills from the undergraduate students with whom they will work and interact on a daily basis,” Unilever human resources business partner Michelle Rocke told Engineering News.

Moreover, to ensure academic continuity, a lecturer would be appointed by Wits, on behalf of Unilever, to supervise and monitor the students for the 12-month period for which they were employed, as well as for their remaining one or two years of study at Wits, to complete their qualification once they had completed their work experience.

The lecturer would be responsible for ensuring students continued to be exposed to academic content and material while working to ensure a seamless transition back into academia in 2017, Rocke explained.

Students participating in this programme would receive financial sponsorship through Unilever to complete their engineering qualification, without any future obligation to the organisation.

Demonstrating government’s participation in the programme, Chieta, through its Strategic Projects Funding allocation, had committed a number of bursaries for the 2015 academic year, as well as a yearly stipend during students’ year of employment.

Unilever would also provide a monthly stipend to assist students to cover their living costs.

“We were initially concerned that, once the students had been provided with work experience, they would not return to complete their academic qualification, so we’ve made it clear that they will be given a one-year fixed-term contract and won’t be employed by Unilever permanently.

“We can’t be seen to be encouraging the abandonment of academia,” she remarked.

Commenting on the programme, which would be rolled out to other Unilever facilities should it prove successful, head of manufacturing for Unilever in South Africa and Southern Africa Sandeep Desai asserted, at the launch, that his company’s over-R4-billion investment in local manufacturing capacity would prove worthless if the skills to operate factories were largely absent.

“Great assets and great performance come from great skills. You need to be an expert at the craft that you do. We are hopeful that this pioneering project will change the way that engineering skills are developed in South Africa and we think that it will result in the students becoming fundamentally better engineers,” he maintained.

The first intake of students expected to begin their year of work experience earlier this month, with the remainder starting the following week.