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EDUCATION

ORPOMTELEASENDING AN ASPIRING SCHOLAR OFF

to college is a cherished rite of passage

in Western households. But in the globaleconomy, where companies rise or fall onbrainpower, higher education has takenon broader meaning and new urgency.Corporate HydroPower University inMoscow teaches plant managers howto wield turbine technology and rotordynamics to deliver power efficiently tomillions of energy-hungry clients. Engi-neers at the University of Petrobras inRio deJaneiro must master the secrets ofpumping oil buried Tooo meters beneaththe Atlantic. Forget ivy-hung walkwaysand fratfests; think enterprise incuba-tors, virtual oil rigs, and mobile classesfor transport workers in railroad cars.The alma mater isn't what it used to be.

Today, corporate colleges are consid-ered the fastest-growing sector in highereducation. Their numbers have more

BY MAC MARGOLISILLUSTRATION BY DAVID GOLDIN

than doubled in the last decade and nowtop 4,ooo, according to Annick Renaud.Coulon, who chairs the Global Councilof Corporate Universities. More than4 million individuals are studying at a

company university, where by some esti-mates enrollments may soon outnumberthose of traditional universities. Oncea luxury for the Fortune goo brands,the corporate academy is now standardpractice, with every self-respecting busi-ness boasting a campus or sharing onewith other companies. Unlike traditionaluniversities, corporate campuses gener-ally do not grant degrees (though manypartner with traditional colleges thatdo), concentrating instead on short-termimmersion courses tailored to enhanc-ing particular careers and businessdisciplines. Renaud-Coulon calls them

"spaces ofapplied education to put busi-ness strategies into motion."

The concept is not new. McDonald'shad its budding sous-chefs flippingburgers at Hamburger University inOak Brook, Illinois, as early as 1961. Butas market opportunities have expanded,so have the demands on the workplace.Employees must be able to communi-cate and work in teams. Moving easilyin varied cultures now counts as muchas mastery of quantum mechanics.In some countries, where traditionalclassroom education has failed, compa-nies find themselves teaching readingand writing. Others impart nuancesof strategy, logistics, and technologythat normally take years of hands-onexperience to acquire. Everywhere, anincreasingly advanced economy makesthe corporate learning curve steeper."This is no longer a vanity project," saysMichael Stanford of the International

ININGSchool of Management Developmentin Lausanne, Switzerland. "Companiesare taking much more seriously theidea that learning and development arecompetitive tools. Businesses that don'tdo this are not going to get as much outof their employees."

Corporate academies are as variedas the brands they represent. Legacycompanies like General Electric and Sie-mens keep schools around the world,shadowing their imperial footprint.Motorola's international campuses areidentical, dor,r'n to the blackboards andfurniture color schemg whereas GDF-Suez is so radically decentralized thatits Paris-based corporate university cansimply influence, and not impose, localprogrâms on its worldwide campuses.Russia's Oboronprom (United IndustrialCorporation) is a totally mobile univer-sity that dispatches teams of instructorsto hold two- and three-day seminars to

BIG COMPANIES ARE SETTING UP UNIVERSITY

CAMPUSES ALL OVERTHE WORLD TO HELP PRODUCE

THE KINDS OF EMPLOYEES THEY MOST NEED.

employees at zo different helicopter- andairplane-assembly plants. The Chinesecomputer-parts giant Huawei hiredstarchitect Norman Foster to design itsfour-building university complex inBeijing. Dell University, fittingly, is com-pletelyvirtual

Not surprisingly, some of the moststriking examples of corporate learningare in emerging Asia, Central Europe,Latin America, and Africa. Few are doingas much as Infosys. With two heliports,a professional cricket stadium, a palm-studded pool, and a three-screen multiplex housed in a mirrored geodesic domgthe Infosys Global Education Center inDelhi looks like a cross between Dis-ney's Epcot Center and Las Vegas. Thegpo million complex already puts Delhi'snew Commonwealth Games venues toshame-and a gl5o million expansion is inthe works. Each ofthe r4,ooo-odd recruitshas his or,rrn room and computer worksta-

tion, an opulence unheard ofat the typicaltech-starved university campus in the restofAsia. Much of the coursework and test-ing are conducted online.

But what really stands out is the cur-riculum. Young engineers undergo aprogram equivalent to an advancedcomputer-science degree. To increasethe employability of future recruits,Infosys also trains hundreds of uni-versity instructors to teach the basiccommunication and problem-solvingskills essential for working in diversemarkets. "What we do is to bridge thegap between what the academic institu-tions do and what industry requires,"says Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishan,who describes the campus as more likea well-endowed U.S. university than amodestly equipped Indian one.

Not long ago, such elaborate effortsmight have seemed superfluous. Bigbusinesses had their pick of the finest

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minds from world-class universities,scooping young managers, engirreers,and IT whizzes straight off the com-mencement dais. Today, with new tech-nologies and management methodsconstantly tested and toppled in thecrucible of the workplace, businesseshave developed learning needs of theirown. And some skills simply cannot bebought or outsourced. Every year cam-puses disgorge engineers, economists,and managers, but few are schooledin the fine points of producing bio-fuels, assembling aircraft, or movingmillions of tons of ore across oceans.Furthermore, a large chunk of theworkforce-So percent of hydropowerexperts in Sweden and 45 percent of oilengineers at Petrobras-are set to retire,threatening to take with them decades

of experience and institutional memory."You can go to business school and learnabout global-supply-chain managementand leadership," says Stanford. "Whatis not easy is to learn about ways thatare applicable to your business."

The challenge is even more dauntingin developing nations, where failing tra-ditional education forces companies toteach the basics. India's software power-house Infosys started its or,rm universityin part because ofthe reality reflected instudies like a recent one by McKinsey &Co. that found that only z5 percent ofnewengineers, rS percent ofnew finance andaccounting graduates, and ro percent ofoverall college grads were adequatelyprepared to work for multinational com-panies. "People in emerging markets,while often talented, suffer from whatwe could call last-mile employability,"says Vijay Govindarajan, a professorat the Tuck School of Management at

44 N sEPTEMBER 20, zoro

Dartmouth. "They lack communicationsskills, dont know how to work in teams,are extremely theoretical, and are taughtto be ovedy obedient. These are prob'lems that companies have to correct."

ln Brazt1, the skills void is even moredramatic. Often blue-collar laborers ateven the biggest corporations lack rudimentary education. "Teaching math andPortuguese is not part of our core busi-ness, but because of flaws in the edu-cational system we frequently findourselves in that rolg" says Desiê Ribeiro,education manager at Vale, which gives

classes in railway cars along the coun-try's vast rail network. It's worse in Valdsoverseas outposts, such as Mozambiqueand New Caledonia, where the companyhad to teach miners basic excavationskills and train local suppliers in businessmanagement.

In response, some companies are tak-ing their education down the learningchain. Infosys picks bright but oftenpoorly trained recruits and turns theminto world-class techies on its ort'n cam-pus. Recruiters at Siemens, the Munich-based tech and energy multinational,go into high schools-and in some cases

even grade schools-to generate studentinterest in science and math.

But the corporate education is also asymptom of progress. In a time whencompanies are often pioneering tech-nology and innovation, there are thingsthat no school can teach. No engineer-ing school, for instance, can trump Vale's

knowledge of extracting ore from theharsh Amazon rainforest. Likewise,Petrobras is about to probe for oil whereno one has before, under 2,ooo metersof seawater and another 5,ooo meters ofrock, sand, and salt. "We need not just

petroleum engineers, but profession-als versed in microbial carbonate reser-voirs," says Ricardo Salomâo, general

manager of human resources at Petro-bras University. "Not much is knownabout this anywhere."

The classroom investments are pay-

ing off. Thanks largely to its prowessin offshore oil-now part of the corecurriculum at Petrobras University-the Brazilian major currently controlsz4 percent of deepwater operations.And as it begins to pump from its newdeepwater reserves, it will need to addB,ooo to 9,ooo new employees by zor5,far outstripping the supply of univer-sity graduates. By reeducating recruitsand honing young staff, Infosys's uni-versity is leapfrogging the faulty Indianeducational system to create softwareengineers from graduates in other disci-plines, which has in turn propelled thecompany's blistering revenue growth ofzo percent to 40 percent a year.

Not everyone is happy about thisarrangement. Many traditional academ-

ics won't hear of putting "university"and "corporate" in the same sentence andclaim that business is enslaving univer-sities to the profit motive. Academics inAustralia complained so bitterly that cor-porate universities there had to rebrandwith names like "leadership centers,"says Renaud-Coulon. There is certainlya case to be made for disinterested schol-arship. But in an economy increasinglydriven by knowledge, where talent isscarce and corporate universities areoutpacing traditional ones, the protests

sound increasingly academic.

With STEF.AN THEIL, JASON OVERDOR4

andrwcv MCNICoLL