SAS's Academic Programme strives to empower professionals of tomorrow with SAS skills today

Students with SAS skills have a competitive advantage in the marketplace, and the company is often approached by businesses looking for specific skills. Businesses do not want to waste money on recruiting students, and then having to train them.

This is according to Nina Frauenfeld, Academic Programme business development manager, SAS EMEA, who was in South Africa recently to open the new Academic stream at SAS Institute's annual users' group conference.

"The company was born of an academic background and academia thus remains close to the heart of the company. More than 2 000 universities and business schools worldwide partner with SAS in the teaching or administrative environment," she said.

SAS's Academic Programme, however, does not simply focus on academia as an industry in isolation.

"Our thrust is to bridge the gap between business and academia," said Frauenfeld.

The SAS Academic Programme therefore encompasses four different areas:

* Student and Learning Intelligence
* Administration Intelligence
* Research Intelligence
* The Academic Programme

The first includes helping academic institutions attract the best students, measure their success and manage the student relationship.

Administrative Intelligence encompasses everything from managing the institution's finances and IT, to HR, including faculty recruitment and retention.

"All this needs to happen as much in the academic environment as it does in business," said Frauenfeld.

The research arm of the programme focuses on helping students to use SAS for research and analysis. Oxford University, for example, has been using SAS for its clinical trials on Diabetes 2 since 1988 for data handling, cleansing and analysis.

The Academic Programme itself is concerned with, among others, seeding the market with quality students, skilled in SAS and BI. It also focuses on ensuring that graduates are well equipped for the real world.

Tailored campus programmes ensure real world and hands-on experience, while help with curriculum development plugs customers into the academic world, bringing the real world into the classroom. The programme provides numerous service offerings such as Trainer Kits (teaching support material), marketing support, Student Ambassador Competition and many other resources. It also encourages industry partnerships, which help not only to bridge the gap between academia and business, but have several other beneficial spin-offs including recruitment opportunities.

Internships enable customers to use students in their proof of concept phases, while the programme also serves to leverage academic expertise for consulting projects.

So successful has North-West University been in the SAS Academic Programme that it was awarded the prestigious Academic Excellence Award at SAS Forum International in Lisbon this year.

The university has excelled in training mathematicians for the business world and offers a post graduate programme that builds the next business generation in operational and managerial competencies in BI.

It has been involved with commercial customers on a consulting level - in South Africa and beyond - and its involvement in business, academia and research really bridges the gap.

In South Africa, where there is a huge need for students with SAS skills, North-West University trains 25 to 30 postgraduate students in BI and risk each year.