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Project Manager: Scott Lofgren, (703) 973-1010 or Scott.Lofgren@bentley.com
Project Participants | Overview | Project Activities | Business Case | Project Deliverables
Project Participants
Overview
This project will develop a "core competency" guide for our industry to share with degree granting institutions (first), followed by other non-profits agencies, continuing education, and training centers to help in curricula development.
Educational institutes are eager to develop a "level of learning" for their students. In the absence of industry input, schools provide a broad curriculum that may not meet industry needs and as such, both the graduate and the hiring firm are disadvantaged, especially the first year.
Through member surveys, developing what industry needs are and definitively put the needs in an "Industry Core Competency Guide" will assist the degree program, the student and ultimately the industry.
Business Case
In most cases, the first year after graduation is spent teaching the individual technologies and needs of the business - some say that the core knowledge necessary to be successful are lacking. Graduate productivity is lower the first year.
Case in point, in a recent study in China of over nearly 10,000 students, 51.5% said what they learned was not relevant to the needs of their job.
Generally speaking, industry has not shared what they are looking for or need. Providing a roadmap of core competencies deemed essential by members of FIATECH will assist universities and trade schools in the preparation of their graduates, which will make new hires more productive earlier.
This should be considered cost avoidance for industry by specifying competencies that the industry deems necessary. Moreover, graduates will feel better joining the workforce, which should increase morale.
Bottom Line: This will allow schools to incorporate necessary elements into their curriculum built on competencies which will produce a more successful graduate entering the workforce (and will be more productive earlier).
Project Activities
FIATECH members will respond, accurately and succinctly, to address and describe our needs as an industry. Focus will be within three disctinct groups:
1. Allied organizations such as FIATECH, ASCE, CII, etc.
2. Academia
3. Industry
We are soliciting volunteers who have valuable input in the following:
1. How does your company currently interact with academia to align your needs with the students who are graduating?
2. What would you consider helpful for academia to have from industry in order to better prepare the future workforce, if anything?
3. How could industry best convey to universities the competencies that they deem essential in their line of business?
4. Would you be willing to work with us to organize the most productive and practical frameworks to best enable a technology/knowledge workforce of the future?
Expected Project Deliverable
A comprehensive guide/plan which identifies the core competencies our members deem essential for graduates to be more productive and adapt more easily into their first year in the workforce.
The guide would be broadly distributed upon completion and used by our members, universities and trade schools to better prepare our "future hires".
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