The College of Engineering at Ain Shams University in Cairo has an air of faded grandeur about it. Its building, in the old neighbourhood of Abbasiya, was once a royal mansion. The glamour of the past may now have worn away, but amid the fading rococo walls there is an air of new vitality. For the past nine years, changing groups of students have kept their hopes high of one day merging the rigorous theories of academic life with the hard reality of the market place. Their project, known as Mechanical, Electrical and Civil Architecture, or MECA for short, is part of a multi-disciplinary, partially extra-mural, experimental programme that aims to fuse the expertise of business with the energy of the students at the College of Engineering. Mustafa Abdel-Moneim, a second-year student at the college, handles much of the intensive public-relations effort without which MECA cannot survive. The group, he explained, brings business leaders from various companies and organisations, seeks donors in major corporations and arranges face-to-face training and assessment between the veterans of the trade and the aspirants of academia. “For nine years after this activity started, MECA had a vision and a mission. The aim was to prepare students for the job market. We improve their technical and non-technical skills through specialised training and lectures offered by managers in various fields. MECA is also sponsored by international corporations,” Abdel-Moneim said. MECA organises two major activities every year. One is the MECA Academy, which focuses on training. The other is the MECA Internship, which couples students with major business firms. The academy offers non-technical training in the form of lectures on various topics having to do with starting a business, contacting clients, applying for a job or managing a team. After the participants have sat in lectures on human resources, marketing, operations and planning, they are sent out to the field to try their hands in the world of work. Organised in teams, they are given a problem and asked to come up with a solution. The teams compete, exactly as firms do in real life, and their efforts are assessed by a panel. But instead of the winner getting the contract, they get certificates and awards, and in some cases promises of future employment. Typically, the teams work for about two months on their project. Then the time for presenting the project comes. At this point, the pressure is high, for the presentations they have prepared will be reviewed not by peers or professors, but by real-life business leaders and corporate specialists. If the corporate people like what they see, they may offer the students a chance for future internships, or even jobs. Abdel-Moneim describes how MECA came to life as a result of the efforts of a different group of students several years ago. “Eight students started MECA nine years ago,” he said, adding that the students had noticed that companies were hiring graduates who had some training and skills, things that conventional academia cannot always offer. The brilliant idea they conceived was to bring the world of business to academia and have the men of the real world teach youngsters used only to theoretical concepts and highly regulated routines. Business is an adventure, a journey of exploration, as the students soon discovered. To be successful in business, they have to be able to work as a team, handle their differences, seek commissions, cajole customers, and all the rest. And they have to do all of that, albeit in a make-believe programme, while meeting the rigorous needs of their academic work. During exam time, MECA goes into hibernation, deferring to the priorities of undergraduate life. But before and after the exams, it springs into life, organising hectic activities of theoretical training, public-relations situations and field work. It is hard work, everyone who has taken part in the programme admits. But the rewards are many: exposure to real-life problem-solving, insight into the workings of the business world and a chance to assess one's own capabilities and those of the team. In 2012, MECA also did the unthinkable. Like all business models, it expanded, created branches and went online. What was, and remains, an amateur exercise now hovers on the peripheries of professionalism. MECA has opened branches at the German University in Egypt, established connections with Cairo University and taken its message to Helwan University, among other places. “We want the largest number of students to benefit from the services we provide. We have offered our services to the colleges of commerce, computer science and information technology. We have even allowed students from universities we couldn't visit to apply to the programme online,” Abdel-Moneim said. On the business side of the work, MECA is seeking more business partners, corporate sponsors and specialist advice. “We try to engage all types of companies in our work, so that our colleagues in other colleges, such as commerce and pharmacology, can benefit from the programme, and perhaps get an internship in these companies,” Abdel-Moneim noted. In the MECA seminars, prominent businessmen speak to the students about their careers and the rules of engagement in the corporate world. Last year, the programme invited Ali Al-Faramawi from Microsoft. The year before, Wael Al-Fakharani from Google offered insights into the work of international organisations. However, not all corporations are invited. To qualify as a MECA sponsor, your company should meet certain ethical criteria. “We have our own code of ethics, which has nothing to do with politics or religion. Our only goal is to serve society. So we do not cooperate with any company that sells health-threatening or controversial products,” Abdel-Moneim said. Ahmed Yasser, a member of MECA's public-relations team, said that the programme involved training in communication skills, leadership, presentations, planning and marketing. Sara Wael, a second-year student studying electrical engineering, said that applicants to the programme needed to pass a problem-solving test to qualify. The successful candidates must have developed decent skills in mathematics, English and problem-solving, she said. Applying for MECA is also very much like applying for a job. A candidate is interviewed by a panel that gauges his or her motivation and abilities. This is an important exercise, Wael said, since “even if the student is not accepted in the programme, it is still useful, for it prepares them for the real experience of applying for a job with a reputable, perhaps even an international, organisation.” Applicants to the programme have to pass a set of tests to establish their qualifications. Not everyone passes. MECA, Wael said, is currently sponsored by 14 international companies, many of which are involved in the selection process. There is no cronyism, favouritism or trickery. As in real-life situations with big business, only qualifications matter, and the interviewers make sure that the selection process is transparent and fair. “The companies set the standards that the applicants should meet, and the selection is done accordingly. If the selection was not done with complete transparency, these companies would withdraw from sponsoring the programme,” Wael said. Once the successful applicants join the programme, they attend a series of lectures by experts. Then the fun starts. The participants are organised into teams of 12, usually two from each specialisation. Each team acts as a small company and starts working on project ideas in agreement with the sponsors. “The teams then present their projects and ideas to the managers, and the winning three groups are given special awards,” Yasser said. Last year, the teams competed to solve the problems of Egypt's railways. They examined operational problems and engineering problems and offered advice on investment and marketing. Ahmed Mustafa, a first-year student studying mechanical engineering, applied for the programme last year, but couldn't get in. “I failed the interview, because I was just out of the closed environment of school and was too shy. Now I have changed a lot,” he said. Mustafa is excited about the MECA programme because it allows the students the chance to determine their own goals even before joining the programme. Amr Osama, a second-year student of electrical engineering, was one of the wining team in the Egyptian railway project last year. He says that the problem-solving approach opened his eyes to new possibilities. Last year's task was for the students to design a Build-Operate-Transfer project, allowing a private company to run the railways for 10-50 years, after which the service would be returned to public ownership. The students were asked to design a cost-effective and technically valid plan, and were given six weeks to do so. “We went to stations and identified real problems. Each one in the group worked according to their specialisation to promote the team's objective,” Osama said. Marketing students assessed the railways marketing plans. Human resources students designed retraining schemes. Manufacturing students looked into the equipment the railways needed and reached decisions on what to buy and what to make locally. Osama's team came up with a 200-page document that they had to present to the board of directors of an international company. The experience was nothing short of “scary”, as he puts it. “Our idea was to start renovations, sustain losses in the first 10 years, and then make exceptional profits that would allow us to return the company to the government in working order. Other groups claimed that they could turn out profits in the first year, which is wishful thinking.” In its internal organisation, MECA is also run like a corporation. At the end of the academic year any member of the group can be nominated as president. The selection is made by the current president and two members of an advisory panel consisting of previous presidents and current members. In applying for a MECA post, the aspiring candidate must propose a business plan and go through a hearing in front of all MECA members. Appointment to MECA's secondary roles is also done through rigorous selection. The whole experience is designed to mimic as closely as possible the challenges of the real world. As Mustafa puts it, “universities are not in the business of helping students achieve their full potential. Students have a lot to figure out on their own,” and MECA helps them to do it.
