Engineering students at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) could face some major obstacles this term, with around 100 students struggling to find co-op placements, according to Dale Kirby, MHA for St. John’s North and the New Democratic Party’s critic for advanced education and skills.
An important aspect of many engineering departments across the country, the inability for MUN’s students to find hands-on work experience could put them at a disadvantage for both their own graduation requirements, as well as future employers’ expectations.
The call for the government to step in and ensure that every student meets their co-op criteria is being led by Kirby.
MUN’s progression away from a “pre-engineering” program, coupled with an increase in enrolment, has led to more students vying for hands-on experience than in previous years, Kirby said.
Kirby is calling on Newfoundland’s Progressive Conservative government to address the issue, even though he said they’re usually progressive in terms of education.
“We’re asking them to go a bit further at this point in time to address this, which would really boil down to providing a subsidy to cover the cost,” he said.
“When you have 100 additional students, that is a lot of positions to try and find over any period of time,” he said.
“I’m not exactly certain what the co-op office has done in trying to address the problem themselves — one assumes they’ve been working for some time.”
Despite these efforts, MUN’s associate dean Andy Fisher has denied any scarcity of placements. He said he’s “not aware of any recruitment challenges except for those that result from the provincial and national demographic profiles.”
“I believe that we have reached a new record for placements this winter . . . We do have a particularly large group of students in the class of 2013 as the result of changing from a six-year program to a five-year program,” Fisher said.
“It is particularly challenging to find work placements each time this group is on a work term but the division of co-op ed has done a great job with this challenge so far and we expect that they will continue to do so.”
The Newfoundland Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills could not be reached for comment.
