Interns can help NZ universities keep up with the rate of tech change

Technical change is occurring at an increasing rate. All of us, technical or not,  work to keep up.

At Universities, the cycle of adding new material to an academic course can be very slow - for example, one year to get new material approved, teach it for a year, wait for the student to graduate - so when the student graduates, the info  is out of date, or just missing the latest tech innovation.

Universities are at risk of being sidestepped, by MOOCs,, more and more avenues outside university to support entrepreneurship, vendor certifications, etc as way of staying current.

Businesses respond faster than academic institutions to tech change, so  internships could provide a direct feedback loop from industry to Uni in implementing technological advances. If the university system was ready to implement that feedback.

Given the accelerating rate of change, its not what we learn, its how we learn to learn. One way for for  universities to learn to learn, is by building interns and real-world experience into their academic programs.