‘Making ’em work-ready’
University initiative to serve the manpower needs of the corporate world

By Meha Mathur
June 01, 2009: The aim of higher education should be to make youngsters work ready. But since that is not happening, the standard complain of the industry is that even educated youth from the best institutes enter the world of work as green horns, without much technical prowess or ability to work in teams, and that they have to undergo further several months of training at the cost of employer, before becoming actually fit to work.

It’s this gap between the industry requirement and the supply that DeakinPrime, the corporate education arm of Deakin University, is filling, by providing tailor-made programmes for corporate clients, in association with various universities across the world.

Among its recent initiatives is a partnership with Leighton International, one of the leading contractors and project developers in Asia and the Gulf region, to implement a Leighton Professional Trainee Programme. As part of the programme, DeakinPrime will design, develop and manage the programme to deliver postgraduate education in construction management to Leighton students in India.

Angie Taras, director, business development, DeakinPrime, talked about their approach in making youngsters work-ready, and about the tie up with Leighton. Excerpts:

Deakin University is well-known in India. But what is the role of DeakinPrime?
DeakinPrime is another division of Deakin University. Our emphasis is doing work with corporates. So we are a business to business, not a business to student organisation. So that’s the fundamental difference. We take market intelligence on what is going on in the corporate world and the university uses us as a mechanism to bring that intelligence so that they can create programmes that are more market relevant.

What is the kind of infrastructure support does Deakin University provide for these programmes?
The infrastructure provided is all the intellectual property of the university and we can draw on the academic expertise of the university. However, we are not limited to that. We are like a training advisory body for the corporates so sometimes the solution may not be restricted to Deakin alone. Sometimes, we might need to bring in an Indian university, or Harvard or Oxford to provide the right solution to that client. So we are allowed to do that.

How do you identify the need area?
The need is identified through discussion with corporate clients. We work with Australian Indian Business Council to create introductions to corporate clients. From there we analyse what are the particular needs of a client that may not be serviced. We are not only working on students who are going to join, but continuous profession development and applied learning.

Which are the corporates with whom you have worked in India?
In India we have done one that is with Leighton. We prepared graduates who were joining that company to get work-ready. We are also in talks with reliance and the Retail Association of India, among others.

How many youngsters have you trained?
In India we have trained a pilot group of 30. Around the world, it would be 50,000. One of the programmes that we do is CPA — chartered professional — for Australia and those students are everywhere, around the world. We mark and assess it. So we act as backend partner to CPA.

In any such agreement, what is the logistical support between the partnering institute and you?
It depends on the collaboration – it could be use of facilities like rooms, it could be access to students, marketing, academic oversight. In India we don’t deliver academic facility so we are looking at that with Indian universities – that can provide the faculty.

As far as Deakin is concerned, is the academic aspect more strong or the marketing aspect?
While what most universities do is terrific work in terms of knowledge creation but I think marketing is important.

Coming to the recent tie-up with Leighton for construction management, what was the objective of the programme?
The objective was to have enough employees for Leighton to meet the needs of future projects. They were going to need 3,000 engineers and they didn’t have those. They wanted to have them trained, and have them work-ready upon graduation from Indian universities instead of taking them onboard and training them for one-and-a-half years. It’s a win-win situation. The company gets trained manpower and the students have a job, and a PG qualification.

How is the certification done?
The certification was guaranteed before the programme was designed. Once the material was ready what Leighton wanted, we matched that against university standard and we looked for a 90 per cent coverage of the underpinning knowledge.

Besides construction, to which industries can you provide the programme?
This model can be applied to any sector. Besides providing trained manpower, we are also looking at innovative approaches to leadership development, and coaching to support informal learning. We are also looking at audits – how well is a company doing education.

So cutting across domains you would have certain modules like teamwork, leadership, which will be common to all.
Yes, but in each case we look at customising solution. Very rarely do we repeat one programme to the next.

What is the cost of programme for a candidate?
The cost is not passed on to the candidate. We quote according to the scope and scale of the project and according to the number of days we need to spend.