In a sign of the growing link between universities and business, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) has signed on to teach SAP skills to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
As part of the software giant’s SAP University Alliances Program (UAP), USQ will train students on SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Performance Management (BPM) software suites as part of their University degrees.
The initiative was rolled out as a pilot in July this year with about 15 on-campus and 140 distance education students. Full roll out is slated for July 2010.
SAP subjects will be offered across the undergraduate Bachelor of Information Technology and the postgraduate Master degree in Information Technology (Professional).
Students will receive 20 hours of SAP practical experience and more than 20 hours of theory on SAP as part of the new course subjects. The university is also looking at offering a SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence module next year as it seeks to better prepare students for a career in IT.
The SAP University Alliances program, launched in 2007, runs in 900 campuses across more than 40 countries. USQ is the 19th university in Australia to become part of the program.
In August IBM announced it had partnered with Monash University on a new $1.2 million Future Leaders Scholarship program aimed at developing IT leaders versed in both technology and business.
Along with funding a number of degrees with majors in business and information technology, the program will allow for CIO :: Monash students to participating in leadership camps, public speaking, mentoring and a 22 week internship at CIO :: IBM or one of its partners.
In May USQ announced it was increasingly turning to social media tools and virtual environments to attract students and improve its services. The university is using the conversational power of social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to build relationships with potential and existing students.