We drove down to the main Skoda plant at 8.00am today for a 9.30am meeting. Skoda have established an internal university which offers proper degrees. It is now in it second year and has an anual intake of around 100 students. It is partially funded by Skoda even though graduates may go to work for other companies. The Technical University of Liberec is a partner in the project.

The aim is to link commercial and economic education with an engineering perspective. The students have to pay their own fees - as a private university there is no state support for them. This means that most of them actually work in the Skoda plant which has a really good impact in terms of integrating practical and theoretical learning.

The new Peugeot-Toyota plant is to be located at Kolin - which is not that far from the Skoda plant. As a result students are keener than ever to enrol at the Skoda university as they see some great career prospects in automotive in that part of the Cz Rep and indeed students at Sko U come from all over the country. When they graduate they are likely to get starting salaries in GBP 5k - 6k range (ok by Cz standards) but prospects are much higher especially if they move on to a management post in Western Europe. However in Cz as in the UK there is a tendency for teenagers to see medicine, law and accountancy as the most attractive career options. Skoda also has a one year Graduate Training Program which graduates would go through if they joined the company.

There isn't another project that we have come across at all like this in any major automotive manufacturing country and pulls together a number of elements that most countries struggle to integrate. It reminds me slightly of the Focus Hope project in Detroit although that has a more "charitable" dimension focusing on mostly black teenagers from inner city Detroit who have not done well in High School. One element of similarity is that students there have to pay their way in an environment which is severely professional and which includes on the campus an amazing state of the art manufacturing facility.