Industrial attachment is largely acknowledged as the integrative faculty between higher education and the real world.
Attachment is the work-based study phase usually undertaken towards the end of a diploma or degree programme to familiarise students with the work environment.
It is designed to inject fresh talent into companies, sharpen the technical edge for the skills set students learn in theory at college or university, and provide a navigable interface between students and the industrial setting.
Recently however, the ideals have been defeated by the inadequacy of attachment openings and departure from convention by companies which are being affected by economic challenges and unprecedented professional downgrade.
These problems have encouraged compromise placements, whereby students take up openings which are barely related to their programmes just to be allowed to proceed to graduation.
Inadequacy of openings has also seen students failing to graduate within set periods, no easy ordeal considering the prohibiting cost of higher education.
Almost every class leaves a few members behind because of this challenge, some of whom never make it to graduation as they get permanently tied down by other survival options.
The far-reaching undoing, however, is the exploitation of the students as cheap labour by companies who are more interested in cost-cutting than maintaining a professional relationship with higher education.
As such, students are being prejudiced of the gains of what is designed to be a foundational experience and an indispensable phase of higher learning without which they cannot be rounded professionals.
In this instalment, Herald Review looks at the original case for internship, the extent of current compromises and a possible rethink.
The original case for industrial attachment is premised on the understanding that universities and colleges primarily offer the theoretic appreciation of disciplines, why the industrial setting enables technical appreciation and practical application of the skills and ideas obtained from the higher learning modules.
Students are required to be attached with companies in their line of interest for periods usually ranging from three to eight months, though duration various from one programme to another.
In Zimbabwe, the Nziramasanga Commission, a government-commissioned inquiry into the state of Zimbabwean education, recognised the value of industrial training in higher education and urged closer partnerships between industries and universities.
Universities have largely formalised an industrial interlude for students in line with recommendations from the Nziramasanga Commission.
A 2015 report by Darlington Mazonga says most students across Zimbabwe’s tertiary institutions are having problems with securing attachment in ideal circumstances.
“The case of industrial attachment affects almost all students in tertiary institutions. With industries and companies collapsing most students end up having their attachments in areas which does not meet the requirements of training,” Mazonga writes.
“The collapse of institutions such as Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF), formed by the government means students are no longer getting financial support during their attachment periods. ZIMDEF was formed by the government in 1996 with a broad objective of financing the development of critical and highly skilled manpower in Zimbabwe,” he observes.
In the meaner and leaner circumstances of the day, researchers have observed that industrial attachment may be a source of discord among workers, if companies approach the service from a money-minded position.
Richard Bukaliya observes in a Zimbabwean study for “International Journal on New Trends in Education and Their Implications” that tension can obtain when internships displace paid workers, allowing companies to dodge liabilities through the non-payment of intern labour.
In such cases, conflict tends both directions as students accept unpaid posts to survive the duration of the internship, sometimes prejudicing regular employees, while regular employees, in turn, treat interns as general labourers and get away with it since students have no recourse.
Supervision and mentoring is an important aspect of internship and it is important that regular employees and students maintain a professional relationship so that the latter, and the industry in general, get the best out of the experience.
Internship no longer assures financial respite for students and guardians. More companies no longer provide payment during attachment while those that do merely offer stipends for transport, perpetuating financial headaches for students who have to have to provide for themselves away from home.
Bukaliya says paying interns is a market-driven decision but companies all have obligations to ensure that the experience is, by all means, relevant to the student’s curriculum.
According to Bukaliya, companies must ensure that the work of the intern is an integral part of the student’s course of study, the student receives credit for the work, the work is a requirement of graduation, the student prepares a report of their experience for their institution, the company receives documentation from the school indicating approval for the internship, the experience is educationally relevant and the learning objectives are clearly defined.
A “Journal of Instructional Pedagogies” report based on a research done in Zimbabwe by Wilson Matamande and others says employers who take students on attachment do not provide adequate on-the-job training as required by the university so that students end up doing menial jobs and as opposed to the essentials of the job.
“In fact, attachment programmes are merely there for students to have a feel of the real life working environment. There is very limited time for students to really get practical working experience,” the researchers say.
They propose that a formally designed programme be implemented to ensure that students get value for the attachment.
“They will be able to learn a lot of things within the limited time available for attachment. It is made possible if the university communicates explicitly their expectation from industry, of course having consulted fully with industry,” the researchers suggest.
In some cases, companies hire unpaid or lowly paid students for departments for which they already have adequate staff, not a problem in itself since students are attached for the development of their technical capacities under experienced and able staff.
In practise, though, students sometimes end up being assigned to feel labour gaps outside their curricula as companies do not place premium on powering guns for the future.
Universities, who only dispatch supervisors for a few minutes’ briefing, may have emulate teacher-training institutions which are consistently in touch with their students during the internship period.
Teacher-training colleges, thereby, ensure that students are getting relevant experience in line with the curriculum and get to monitor the progress of their students realistically through on-site assessment.
This starkly contrasts the current approach by universities who require regular fees and an extra figure throughout the internship year but do not expend enough to demonstrate their involvement.
Universities seem to be more money-minded than development-minded, in this respect, and their approach sounds like “at least, the students are someone’s problem for the time being.” There must be a rethink in this respect.
Moreover, universities and colleges need to work around the fact that unavailability of places and unprofessionalism in the places available have watered down the industrial attachment to a distorted shadow of what is ideally intended.
Instead of leaving the problem to the market, tertiary institutions must devise other means of making sure that students get technical appreciation and practical application of their courses before leaving college.
One of the ways may be setting up their own professional arms on a domestic or, where possible, industrial scale and attaching students there.
For example, there is no reason why journalism-training institutions must not run competitive media of their own, staffed part time by students, and full time by interns from the same institution.
Students are a critical market in their own right. There is no reason why universities and colleges should not offer products and services tailored for this population and, again, interns from the same institutions must staff the business.
In this start-up generation, where big companies are failing and young guns being primed to claim the future, there is no reason why universities must not capacitate students to conquer the world by offering conditional capital and mentoring for brilliant ideas.
Such initiatives could complement the services already offered by traditional industries while ensuring compliance to original standards.