Rolling up their sleeves

Harding says his role in the venture was to “blur the line between industry and academia to meet the new economy”.

And so, he set his sights on converting a standard academic building into a corporate innovation outpost to break barriers.

Bringing this all together was no easy feat, and Harding points out the variety of tasks involved in getting the project off the ground. Those included everything from converting a building into a corporate co-location hub, IT infrastructure, property-leasing agreements, systems integration - which even included parking services having to enable third-party access cards - and producing experiential learning. This sort of foundational work was essential to ensuring students had access to the BNY systems and best practices.

The programme, which began in Autumn last year, brought in 27 students and currently boasts a 97 percent conversion rate. Students make $25 per hour while receiving 3 credits on their transcript.

Following the programme’s completion, 25 out of the 27 students were offered summer internships for $38 per hour. These students will be progressed to the second stage of the programme, and after two semesters, most of them will be offered full-time employment at the bank.

“This whole programme helped the client understand the talent earlier. The HR Director said it was the smoothest onboarding process they’ve had, given the nature of ‘de-risking’ the hire by getting to know them earlier.

“The students also had an enriched 10-week summer internship experience without getting caught up in onboarding logistics, like getting laptops and orientation organised,” Harding points out.

As is the case with most worthwhile endeavours, it has not been without hurdles.

“Implementing this partnership was a masterclass in listening to your partner, thinking outside the box and innovation within the university to build a new product,” Harding explains.

In it for the long haul

Imperial College London is another institution where partnerships with industry are given priority and significance.

QS Insights sat down with Joanna Clark, Director of Industry Partnerships at Imperial College, to understand more about how industry engagement works on campus.

“It’s about creating a holistic ecosystem. Industry engagement is embedded throughout student life. We have guest speakers, industry contacts and showcases in our departments,” Clark says.

“A number of our departments have conversations with the advisory boards of organisations we work with. They discuss what the workforce will need.”

She highlights momentous partnerships such as their work with Shell. This is part of a ‘Prosperity Partnership’, a formal research engagement between UK business and universities co-funded equally by government bodies and private industry.

“The process is competitive. It takes time to build these partnerships,” Clark notes.

She also points out Imperial’s partnership with BASF, a world-renowned chemicals producer and supplier. As a result of this collaboration, 25 PhD students have been trained, 4 patents have been filed and 3 PhD graduates are now working with BASF.

BASF and Imperial are collaborating on Innovative Continuous Manufacturing for industrial chemicals (IConIC). IConIC is a £17.8 million research programme designed to advance flow chemistry, a production technique in which the required reactions take place in continuous operation rather than in batches, which can prevent energy wastage.

Alignment is key

In addition to working on the partnership for the long haul, sharing the same vision is paramount to success.

To Clark, alignment is at the heart of effective partnerships, but it isn’t achieved overnight.

“On campus at Imperial, it’s not just the presence of industry; it’s a constant presence of real-world programmes - very different to ten years ago when there was this vague expectation of the student body to ‘change the world’. That comes from understanding how the world actually needs to be changed and what solutions we can come up with.

“Our departments discuss courses with the advisory boards of some of the industries we work with. It has to be mutually beneficial. In our partnership with Shell, for instance, we were building different activities that then converged into partnership,” Clark tells QS Insights.