Volkswagen College: A college built on the industrial chain

Among the many departments and colleges of Hefei University, Volkswagen College is the most special.

The college is located in the Sino-German Cooperation Innovation Park in HETDA (Hefei Economic and Technological Development Area), with enterprises from the new energy vehicles (NEV) and next-generation information technology industries located just next to it.

53 teachers are involved in teaching at Volkswagen College, providing instruction to its students, with half of them coming from Volkswagen.

Just like the college itself, the curriculum offered is very unique. In addition to general courses on NEVs, there are also curriculum modules co-constructed by the university and Volkswagen, covering topics like production and operations at the company. During a student’s third year of study, the "classroom" will even be transferred to enterprises and training centers for hands-on experience.

Aerial view of the Volkswagen College of Hefei University. (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jun)

In recent years, the automobile industry has been designated as the "first industry" of Anhui Province, and foreign enterprises represented by Volkswagen have gradually increased their capital investment and industrial layout in Anhui.

On July 16, 2021, Hefei University (previously known as Hefei Union University), the Managing Committee Of HETDA, Volkswagen Group China and Volkswagen Anhui signed a letter of intent, deciding to cooperate in the establishment of the Volkswagen College at Hefei University. Through a dual system education approach at the undergraduate level, the initiative aims to integrate education, talent cultivation, industry development and innovation chains. The goal is to create a synergy among professional training, industry, and employment, fueling the development of a world-class NEV and intelligent connected vehicle (ICV) cluster in Anhui. This collaboration is set to provide major support for accelerating the province’s automotive industry’s ascent.

What is dual system education? In the words of Hefei University party committee member and Volkswagen College Dean Wang Xiaofeng, it is a system that puts students in two learning environments, school and industry. Students are taught by tutors in school and engineers in enterprises. Schools and enterprises collaborate to create a cultivation model characterized by “multiple scenarios, stages, and objectives” to achieve the integration of theory and practice. This model improves students' ability to apply theoretical knowledge to enterprise practice, and cultivates "the most needed talents" for enterprises.

Students at Volkswagen College study the subject under the guidance of their teachers (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jun)

"At present, Volkswagen College has three majors: intelligent manufacturing engineering, data science and big data technology, and new energy materials and devices, with a total of 194 students across two cohorts," said Wang.

Even before the establishment of the Volkswagen College, Hefei University had cultivated engineers for Volkswagen Anhui. Working together, the university and company selected third-year students from across a number of majors based on different job requirements. Selected students underwent a one-year corporate training program with Volkswagen, and were referred to as the “seed engineers”.

Today, 11 of those pioneering "seed engineers" have taken up various roles at Volkswagen. Now Volkswagen College has taken over the responsibility of cultivating the next batch of talents.

In July this year, Wang Chengxin, a student majoring in new energy materials and devices at Volkswagen College, just finished her sophomore year. In addition to the academic courses, what impressed her most was the “enterprise courses” on campus.

Wang explained, “The courses conducted by corporate instructors were full of useful information, and gave me a much clearer idea of my future career development.”

For Volkswagen, the use of corporate executives and experts to teach is also an important means to "lead" the talent cultivation process. As of July 2024, Volkswagen Group corporate instructors have completed 53 lectures, with nearly 5,000 attendances.

Martin Hofmann, executive vice president of Volkswagen Group (China), said that Volkswagen College is committed to cultivating versatile and applied talents for the future ICV mobility travel industry.

“This education model requires close collaboration and in-depth exploration between the enterprise and university. In the process of building the curriculum system, Volkswagen Group and the university have engaged in thorough discussions, striving to combine the most cutting-edge technology, products and industry trends with theoretical knowledge,” added Hofmann.

(Pan Yidan, an intern, also contributed to this article.)