Ecsa seeks to improve engineering graduate output

Ecsa VP professor Thokozani Majozi said that good individual high school results also did not necessarily dovetail with university performance and expressed concern about the inability of the majority of engineering students to graduate.

"Although tertiary engineering study programmes are oversubscribed every year," Majozi told Engineeringnews.co.za, "only a quarter of the candidates manage to graduate within the prescribed four years, while a [smaller] number [...] manage to graduate in five years." According to a 2007 University of Cape Town's Centre for Higher Education Development research, roughly 54% of students completing a four-year BSc Eng degree after five years. Higher education institutions offering engineering programmes report that the school system (primary and high schools) did not adequately prepare matriculants for successful studies at universities.

Majozi agreed with Ecsa CEO Dr Oswald Franks in saying that the deficiencies in the school system must be addressed in order to produce a larger numbers of matriculants with mathematics, physical science and English. There is also increased competition among the management, engineering, law, finance, accounting and medicine faculties to attract candidates from the same limited pool of well-performing matriculants, Majozi said. The latest Adcorp Employment Index showed that there are nearly 600 000 unemployed university graduates, mostly in the arts, humanities and social sciences, while the private sector has more than 800 000 vacancies in management, engineering, law, finance, accounting and medicine.

Read the full article on www.engineeringnews.co.za.