The overall project objective is to encourage cooperation of academic sector (HEIs) with professional sector in selected Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand) leading to an enhanced employability of those universities’ alumni. Intensified contact between academic sector and non-academic one (enterprises) will lead to more innovative and relevant curricula. Due to the contact, enterprises will indicate more what knowledge they expect from alumni. Specific objectives are to (i) support networking and create a sustainable link between young graduates (alumni) and employers by establishing Alumni Centres and Platforms for Cooperation with Professional Sector, (ii) improve the study programme curricula at HEIs in the selected Asian universities by introducing (compulsory) internships leading to more practical knowledge and better professional skills of the alumni, (iii) enhance soft skills of the Asian students, and (iv) to introduce the use of guest lectures from the professional sector into study curricula as they are an effective and cheap way to connect private world with academic (or start up a connections). By fulfilling project outputs the increase of communication between academic and professional sectors will be ensured. Professionally trained graduates will enter to the job market and therefore an increase of employability of alumni can be expected. Mutual onderstanding of strenghts, necesities and opportunities will lead to more joint research between Asian HEI’s and Asian private market at local/national level.
The main aim of the project SIMPLE was to encourage cooperation between the academic sector (HEIs) and the professional sector in the area of agriculture and life sciences in selected Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand), leading to enhanced employability of the alumni of those universities. The specific objectives were to: (i) support networking and create a sustainable link between young graduates (alumni) and employers by establishing Alumni Centres and Platforms for Cooperation with Professional Sector, (ii) improve the study programme curricula at HEIs in the selected Asian universities by introducing (compulsory) internships leading to more practical knowledge and better professional skills of the alumni, (iii) enhance soft skills of the Asian students, and (iv) to introduce the use of guest lectures from the professional sector as they are an effective and cheap way to connect private world with academic (or start up a connections).Following main activities were running during three years of the project implementation period. Theproject SIMPLE was launched by the official Kick-off Meeting that was held at CULS in October 2016 where all project partners met and set up the strategy plan and terminology for project. The interactive workshop of “Best practices of Alumni Centres” was organised at UGent on 12th – 14th June 2017 and the draft version of the “Guidelines of the best practice examples for Alumni Centres was presented and discussed. The intensive one-week practical training for staff of the Asian Alumni Centres was provided by BOKU together with representatives of the project partners from 9th till 13th October 2017. Thanks to the support of the project, there were established/improved Alumni Centres at the project partners’ universities (new Alumni Centres at RUA and UBB, new Career Centre at KU, Alumni and Career Centre at the Faculty of Natural Resources of PSU, internationalized and improved Alumni Centres at IPB and UNTAD). The Platform for cooperation was established with the cooperation of all project’ partners to ensure sustainable networking between universities and professional sector (involving industry, governmental organisations, chambers of commerce, embassies, NGOs etc.), at the regional and international level. Sixteen Career Days were organized at six partner universities and were evaluated by the EU project partners to improve management aspects of future additional activities such as soft skills, and CV checks. Information about internship opportunities was provided during the Career Days. The organization of internships at project partner universities was improved thanks to the extension of choices, promotion, quality improvement and evaluation. Experience gained during implementation of the project was shared by providing five publications which are available at the project website and which were shared during more than 50 meetings among academic and professional sector. Last not least, soft skills training was both directly and indirectly included during project activities. The project consortium prepared following documents which were broadly shared within the project team and also other stakeholders as multiplication aspect of the project activities: (i) in-depth analysis of experiences with Alumni Centres in Europe was prepared and published as the study “Good Practices of Alumni Centres”, (ii) Action plan for cooperation with the non-academic sector, (iii) Guidelines of best practice examples of Alumni Centres, (iv) models of Internships Forms and Evaluation sheets for implementation of internships, (v) Internship report and (vi) Feasibility Study of Alumni and Career Centres & Platforms for Cooperation with the Professional Sector.