Corporate Universities and South Africa

For the past week I have been in South Africa giving a seminar at the University of South Africa (UNISA) on corporate universities. Organized by Thinyane Molelle (center of photo), a government education official as well as a budding entrepreneur, it was attended by government officials, educators and a few executives from the corporate world.

The need for a variety of flexible educational sources is critical for the future success of South Africa. South Africa has an unemployment rate exceeding 25%. This was caused both by apartheid and by an changing economy. Corporations need skilled staff - people with advanced skills in reading, languages, math, and science. This economy has skipped the manufacturing phase where people with lesser skills can find basic employment. Apartheid also left most middle-aged black Africans uneducated and unskilled.

The question this government faces is how to rapidly educate (or re-educate) these 8 million people for work in corporations, government offices, and in tourism and retail services.

Corporate universities offer a way to accomplish that, especially when they can be funded and operate under a group of companies representing an industry segment or a region. If these can be established successfully, they may provide a bridge between the formal academic world and the world of on-the-job training.

Putting these together is a challenge when formal academic institutions are afraid of the competition and no one knows if CUs can produce the kind of worker needed. A few experiments about to get underway by Thiayane may help prove that one way or the other.

I think it is from emerging economies that have talent pain that we will begin to develop new ways of developing people using both the vast array of technology we have (that is, by the way, still not "here" in South Africa in an affordable way) and more traditional methods wielded differently.