Achieving Sustainable Education

The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that is currently underway aims to offer all people the opportunity to achieve a worthwhile future while also integrating knowledge about sustainability into the education environment. Education also plays an important role for businesses, since their success is based on having well-trained, highly qualified, and skilled employees. As part of its corporate responsibility strategy, AUDI AG therefore invests at all levels in the training and advancement of its employees, expands the range of education in the regions surrounding its corporate sites, and works to help underperforming and socially disadvantaged students. To put the strategic mission “We live responsibility” into practice, Audi also trains its employees specifically on the issue of sustainability.

Sustainability is anchored as a fundamental goal in Audi’s corporate strategy. In order to make employees aware of this issue as early as possible, the company begins with the apprentices and fosters their understanding of corporate responsibility by taking an integrated approach. Work, social, and self-learning skills are strengthened at a personal level so that apprentices are capable of lifelong learning. At the specialist level, essential aspects of sustainability are added: Apprentices are given information about the most important CO2 leverage effects within the car and in production; the possibilities of alternative drive technologies; and the requirements that result from climate change, the urbanization of living spaces, and the age structure of the society. In a pilot project that begins in the 2014 training year, the company wants to integrate theoretical knowledge of sustainability into its training as a fixed component, and along with this, to systematically prepare young employees for the economic, ecological, and social challenges facing the company.

“Dual” vocational training, in which students simultaneously receive training within a company and at a public vocational school, is common in Germany. Audi also offers the option of combining additional degrees with practical training that are officially recognized, including the acquisition of a technical school-leaving diploma (Fachabitur) or a Bachelor of Engineering, for instance. The success of the dual training model has motivated Audi to establish this model at its international sites as well. For example, Audi México in San José Chiapa has already begun providing dual training to young, skilled employees, three years before the opening of the new plant in 2016. There are currently 110 Mexican apprentices who are trained to become mechanics or mechatronics engineers based on the time-tested German vocational training system. For more than 10 years now, Audi Hungaria has been training employees in Győr, Hungary, in what now amount to 13 different vocations; dual training has been offered here since 2011. Audi was also the first German manufacturer to bring the dual training system to China. Today the company cooperates with nine vocational schools and other German car manufacturers. Dual training is currently in the pilot phase at the Brussels site. Audi is the very first industrial company there to offer this form of vocational training. For apprentices at the international Audi sites, the combination of sound practical training with a strong theoretical framework opens up completely new job prospects.

Audi also places a high priority on linking theory and practice in university education. This is why Audi offers the possibility for dual studies at its sites in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm. The company has been cooperating since 1998 in the “StEP” (Studies and Experience in Practice)program with the Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences, and since 1999 with the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University. The content of the courses is continuously updated and adapted to new developments. As a result, changes in the German energy landscape in 2012 led to a course of studies in “Technologies for renewable energies,” which was added to the course offerings in the StEP program. The goal of the “Entrepreneurial activity, global responsibility and sustainability” chair, endowed by Audi, is to firmly embed sustainability within university education, going beyond the automotive core competence. Audi founded the chair in 2013 at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, at the European Center for Sustainability Research. 

Audi is also entering into strategic partnerships with universities in order to accelerate knowledge-transfer between research institutions and industry. Currently, Audi is cooperating with 13 partner universities. About 140 doctoral candidates are now working toward their degrees in research projects financed by Audi, and more than 120 Audi employees are involved in university education.

Audi is giving a chance to job-seeking young people who have not found apprenticeships and helping them make up their academic deficits and boost their social skills. With its job-entry qualification program (EQ) and a support year, Audi and the employment agency offer these young people prospects for the future. In one year, the young participants acquire basic technical skills, are integrated into the working world, and develop personally. This increases their chances of getting a job with Audi or in
another company.

In addition, Audi wants to give children and youth with difficult starting conditions equal opportunities and is therefore supporting Germany’s first public “Profile School” in Ingolstadt. The model project, which is the first of its kind in Germany, will help gifted children and youth who have had a difficult start in life – but who are eager to learn – to attain their German high-school leaving certificate(Abitur). The school offers ideal learning conditions: Learning and break periods are alternated during the full-day instruction; in the afternoons, the students work in small groups to go through what they have learned in lessons in greater depth. In addition, an individual plan for supporting each child is created in consultation with the teachers. This plan is tailored precisely to the talents and needs of each individual child and is made up of 10 learning segments. Social education workers and voluntary mentors supervise the special classes at a college preparatory high school and an elementary schoolin Ingolstadt. The cooperative project involving Audi, the state government of Bavaria, the city of Ingolstadt, and the Roland Berger Foundation was launched for the 2014 / 2015 school year with two “forerunner” classes of up to 18 students. Audi will support the Profile School long term with up to € 1 million per year. 

With its job-entry qualification program, the support year, and the Profile School, Audi is working to promote educational equality in Germany. The Audi Group has also made the promotion of education within the company environment a global focus of its social support guidelines