Uni placement conundrum

An old school mate of my lad is doing engineering at uni, and this year is on a work placement.

He has to pass his placement to go back for his final year in September, and has to produce copies of the designs he worked on as a portfolio.

The sticking point is that his placement is with an F1 team, who are flatly refusing to let him share any of the designs he’s worked on, and NDRs were required from the outset.

F1 team will provide statements to support his portfolio, uni are saying they “must” see designs as proof.

Anyone got any experience or wisdom to share?

Can the Uni sign the NDA and be allowed into the private room? Or see evidence but not have access to keep any (like a data room in M&A practice)

I suppose my ‘wisdom’ is that it’s very much a problem that will be sorted out at/with university rather than on Singletrack!

Not sure what university, the one that I’m at would have an obvious chain of command and appeals process etc to sort this.  I’d assume that his will be similar.  Sounds like a hell of a good placement for an undergrad!!

Could he not negotiate with the uni and the company to let him continue to the 4th year and let the uni have limited access to his f1 work layer, when it is next sensitive.

What do the student do who work on MOD projects?

Was he responsible for the porpoise feature?  They are never going to release that embarrassment

What do the student do who work on MOD projects?

They can probably get copies of everything from the Chinese embassy.

If the Uni approved/facilitated the placement then I suggest it’s their problem to solve, not his.

yes, slightly surprised this wasn’t foreseen and dealt with as part of agreeing the placement.

What do the student do who work on MOD projects?
They can probably get copies of everything from the Chinese embassy.

Scarily likely on the basis of a briefing we had a few weeks ago…..Chinese National Law requires organisations and citizens to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.”

There are over 150k Chinese students enrolled at UK Unis, and many on placement at UK companies/workplaces. I’m not suggesting they are all being compelled by law to report stuff back to the Chinese authorities (indeed, China denies that intent), but some of them?

If the Uni approved/facilitated the placement then I suggest it’s their problem to solve, not his.

Very much this. I’ve been in this situation from both the uni side and the industry side and these things should have been worked out before the project began, but in any case it’s not up to the student to sort it. I’d say that the default solution must be that the uni allows the student to pass

Sounds like a hell of a good placement for an undergrad!!

It was – to be fair, he banged out loads of applications early, is clearly bright and competent and got through the selection process.

I think part of the issue is that – how can I phrase this – this is not the usual sort of placement this uni is used to dealing with. They are more used to students not even bothering to get a placement in the first place.

It’s absolutely the unis problem to resolve this, but again, way outside their usual experience.  I’ll feed back some of the ideas to make sure he has suggested and explored them.

The annoying thing is I can see the uni ending up using him as a poster boy – “our students have succeeded in placements with F1 teams – despite **** all help from us”.

Did mean my lad got to pop down to see him yesterday and got a tour of the less secret part of their HQ, which he loved as an F1 fan.

Yep, this is a Gaelic shrug moment from the students perspective. A quick email to whoever in the uni dept is in charge of such things reminding them they approved the placement with the supervisor’s email at the F1 team, a suggestion the talk to each other directly to sort the problem and get on with life.

Are they going to damage relations with an interesting partner they can big up that their students get placed at attracting lots of £9k a year undergrads AND are they going to forgo £9k in tuition fees for this one? There’s the answer.

Gaelic shrug

Is that anything like a “Glesga kiss” ? 🙂

If the Uni approved/facilitated the placement then I suggest it’s their problem to solve, not his.

… is what I was going to say.

When you say ‘uni are saying they “must” see designs as proof’ is that actually the official stance of “the Uni” or just some random lecturer talking mince?

There are ways of obfuscating data.  I had this with my apprenti, there were elements of work we couldn’t disclose for security reasons.  They could still demonstrate setting up a system only with PPI, network details etc blurred out.  All their college really required was for me to sign off that they’d done the work.

But as above, it’s Someone Else’s problem.  The Uni and the F1 team need to talk to each other.

I had a postgraduate student as a tenant who did his engineering placement with a f1 team, I asked him how he got it, his family own a main dealer of the brand.  About 2 years later I got a call from an estate agent asking for a reference as he was applying to rent a place, being nosy, I asked what the rent was….it was like 5k per month.

He was really well connected, about the next 3 tenancies were all friends or family.

Sorry no idea re original question, just random related interesting stories.

What do the student do who work on MOD projects?

We have our own uni for that stuff, and don’t tend to supply projects on current standards of equipment, or the projects are adding to existing equipment without requiring the actual designs of the kit.

Did he know that he’d have to produce a portfolio, and did he ever tell the F1 team this? Everyone is blaming the uni here, but it is very possible all parties have overlooked details because it’s a bit cool?

Is there a contract involved? Is it mentioned there?

“He has to pass his placement to go back for his final year in September.”

“They are more used to students not even bothering to get a placement in the first place.”

Presumably most students just don’t return? Sorry these statements confuse me. When I did placements (a long time ago) we had to do a presentation and someone came out to see us but that was enough.

Can his supervisor sign an NDA and spend a day there to see what the lad has been doing and sign off his placement that way?

I’ve been involved in placements from the uni side. Before any placement starts there should be an approval process during which the nature of the work involved is made clear by the company (to ensure that learning outcomes can be met) and the assessment criteria at the end are made clear by the uni (to ensure the learning outcomes can be assessed). There should then be an NDA put in place, agreed by the legal team of the uni and the legal team of the company. The student has no role in this process. I’ve stopped placements from starting when it has been apparent that an agreement could not be reached.

It’s not clear in this particular case what the assessment involves. Some placements have a relatively low bar for passing (e.g. the student did a minimum number of hours). Others have much higher requirements both for the work itself (e.g. planning and executing parts of a project), and its assessment (e.g. a written report, oral exam, presentation). If access to the work done by the student was always going to be required for assessment, the problem arising now is the fault of the uni.

“ When I did placements (a long time ago) we had to do a presentation and someone came out to see us but that was enough.”

Placement requirements and their timing vary between courses, and even between institutions offering the same course. In many universities the placement year is the 3rd year, but it can also be the 4th year for some integrated masters. There will sometimes be related course codes whereby if a student does not find a placement (which can be a competitive process, with a formal application and interview), they default to the equivalent course code for an internal project (leading to the same degree at the end).

Some useful stuff here to feed back for him to check, new someone would know how these things should work, thanks.

The uni have been checking in on him via phone – usually surprised that they’ve interrupted him working at 10am on a Tuesday.

Fwiw, if students don’t do a placement then I think they are ineligible to progress to the masters, and a few simply choose to go straight on for the basic degree.

Can his supervisor sign an NDA and spend a day there to see what the lad has been doing and sign off his placement that way?

This is essentially what we did. No way the uni can accept the company’s say-so (I’d have thought)

And in surprising news today, the F1 team involved have ended their tradition of taking the placement students to the British GP as a freebie.

Friend and his fellow students have figured out it is cheaper to go watch the Hungarian GP  than go along the M40 to Silverstone and will be banging their leave requests in on Monday!

I had the same problems when creating a body of work for my chartership as much of my work was either defence related or commercially sensitive.  The solution was to create a portfolio which describes the general work done and they can then answer any specific questions verbally about the specifics of the system/work undertaken.

“But as above, it’s Someone Else’s problem.”

It might be someone else’s responsibility, but it’s definitely the student’s problem because he’s gonna feel the consequences if no-one sorts it out.

If the geezer wants to go back and work for the team after uni, he should try to make this situation easy on them. Come up with a solution that the uni jobsworth can live with – don’t ask them to do any thinking themselves…

Surely the uni want to use placements with this f1 team to sell the course. It looses it’s shine if they advertise it as ” you can work with an f1 team but it’ll knacker your course prospects as we don’t trust that you’ve actually done anything.”