/ 2 October 2008

Committee to stem flow of outgoing engineers

On average a professor earns an annual package of R500 000, while junior and senior lecturers earn between R250 000 and R350 000.

A committee of three university deans of engineering has been set up to find ways of stemming the haemorrhage of academics to the private sector, where they double or treble their salaries.

The committee is headed by the University of Cape Town’s Francis Petersen, with Wits University’s Beatrys Lacquet and the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson Ijumba.

A report commissioned by the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) shows there are about 300 vacancies for engineering academics. It has been estimated that more than 1 000 engineers, 300 technicians and 15 000 artisans must be trained to reduce the national skills shortage.

On average a professor earns an annual package of R500 000, while junior and senior lecturers earn between R250 000 and R350 000.

In January Fin24.com reported that at least 300 qualified engineers leave South Africa each year and that 79 of the country’s 231 local municipalities lack civil engineers, technologists or technicians.

Academics’ defection to industry is influenced by heavy workloads as well as increasing numbers of poorer-quality students. High vacancy rates result in a smaller student intake at some institutions and lower graduation rates.

Petersen said his committee wants to encourage industry to fund chairs at universities and to subsidise academic salaries.

“We also want to discuss the secondment of industry staff to universities and joint appointments of professors in industry and at universities.”

Academics want the education department to rethink its subsidy allocation to favour teachers of scarce skills.

But several heads of engineering schools fear this could increase the number of middle-level lecturers moving to industry.

Dean of engineering at Stellenbosch University Arnold Schoonwinkel said such academics “have not yet got their professorships. They carry the teaching load but they are not quite there in the top academic ranks. They are at a stage where they want to buy houses and cars and industry salaries are attractive.

“If we lose this layer there will be very young lecturers at one level and then those very close to retirement. There will be no follow-up.”

Ian Jandrell, head of electrical and information engineering at Wits, said: “We need industry to partner in infrastructure support and salaries. We want them to recruit graduates but not to poach staff. We are under-producing graduates but should not shoot ourselves in both feet by losing the teachers to industry.”

Huw Phillips, head of mining engineering at Wits, said he has eight vacancies. “I had five female academics at the start of the year. Four resigned. The Mining Charter says that by April next year 10% of all positions have to be female. All were master’s graduates working on their PhDs.”

He cautioned that if industry recruits academics they “are choking off the future pipeline and this will have a multiplier effect — one lecturer has the potential to graduate 50 to 70 students”. He said some companies view donations to universities as charity, when they should be part of their business operations.