DOUBLE Whammy

ASEE Prism, Summer 2008 by Boroughs, Don

SOUTH AFRICA IS DESPERATE FOR TRAINED ENGINEERS, BUT ITS STUDENTS FACE MAJOR OBSTACLES: POOR HIGH SCHOOL PREPARATION-A LEGACY OF APARTHEID-AND LOSS OF INSTRUCTORS TO HIGH-PAYING INDUSTRY JOBS.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA-It has been called a "war situation," a "major crisis" and a "battle." And the troops being sent to the front line are the engineering faculty of South Africa.

A severe shortage of engineers threatens the economic growth this emerging nation has enjoyed for nine straight years. The government wants universities to increase the number of engineering graduates by more than 70 percent, from 1,400 to 2,400 a year, and has put up nearly $100 million for engineering schools as a catalyst. But the extra money will go only part way to solving the problem. Across the country, universities are struggling to attract and keep engineering instructors. And South African high schools produce too few students qualified to enter engineering, a continuing legacy of 4½ decades of white-dominated apartheid rule.

With understaffed engineering departments training underprepared students, universities are adopting a range of approaches, from gung-ho to go-slow, and experimenting with various techniques to find and educate future engineers. Yet no one is quite certain how the goal of a thousand more engineers a year can be achieved-or indeed, whether it is achievable at all.

CREAKING Infrastructure

Signs of the need for engineers are everywhere in South Africa. The cover of a business magazine shouts, "WANTED: 68,000 engineers/artisans-Educashen Crysis" (sic). New or refurbished stadiums for the 2010 soccer World Cup are rising above every major city. And the creaking state of the nation's core infrastructure has been brought into sharp relief by a series of rolling blackouts since the beginning of 2008. "Our backbone is broken in many places," says Allyson Lawless, former president of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, a professional group.

While demand has been rising, the supply has been crimped by the emigration of experienced-mainly white-engineers. They are leaving in response both to rising crime and to affirmative-action hiring policies intended to correct past racial discrimination that favored whites. Although industry has mostly reverted to hiring any engineer it can find, regardless of color, government and parastatal corporations are still trying to re-balance the complexion of their technical staffs. "No public-sector department will take on a white engineer," says Lawless.

At the same time, universities are trapped in a Catch-22 in which industry wants a new generation of engineers, yet hires faculty away from their teaching positions. "We can throw money at [the academic problem] and build buildings," says Mark Alexander, acting dean of engineering and the built environment at the University of Cape Town, "but how you find staff to put in those buildings is another problem."

Finding students adequately grounded in math and science to fill the classrooms is also a struggle. Out of a half-million students leaving South African high schools last year, fewer than 10,000 had the minimum test results in math and science that would qualify them for engineering school. Alexander would like UCT to produce its share of the thousand additional engineering graduates, but, he says, "within our constraints, it's not realistic."

It is perhaps no coincidence that when the government cried for help, a university located in the capital, Pretoria, rushed in with the greatest sense of urgency. The intake of first-year engineers at the University of Pretoria has leapt from 600 to 950 since 2002. "Basically, the aim is to double the number of graduates," says Josua Meyer, chair of the School of Engineering. By 2010, the university expects to graduate nearly twice as many engineers as the next largest engineering school in the country. "South Africa is so far behind in training engineering students that we feel we must grow," explains Roelf Sandenbergh, dean of engineering, built environment and information technology for Pretoria. The government has responded to this ambition by awarding UP more than $20 million for its engineering program. Combined with $30 million of the university's own funds, the grant will be used to add three new buildings to the engineering campus. "The very positive atmosphere toward engineering at the moment is a unique opportunity," says Sandenbergh. "We would like to make the most of the situation."

Growth is happening elsewhere, as well. At the University of Stellenbosch, the chairman of civil engineering, Christo Bester, is amazed that his department's freshman class has more than quintupled since 2002.

But other schools are being more cautious. University of Cape Town has opted for a "limited-growth scenario," according to Duncan Fraser, a chemical engineering professor and assistant dean for academic development. Fraser and other UCT engineering academics are proud to have produced more black engineers than any other South African university, and they aim to increase their first-year intake by 3 percent a year. But experience has given them a heightened awareness of the challenges. For this academic year, 5,000 applications arrived, but only a fraction of the applicants met the minimum qualifications. "We're already going as low as we can go" in accepting students, says Fraser. Any lower and "we'll just double the work with minimal extra output."