Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for May 12, 2009 MICKEY D'S

Uh, make that "Mickey PhD's"...

Two years of training, special cost, earn lettuce fickle youngin' on fancy sheepskin, Hun!

McDonald’s hopes to offer its own PhD

By David Turner

McDonald’s hopes to offer its own PhD, throwing down the ultimate challenge to the popular wisdom that the high-street fast-food chain creates nothing but low-paid, low-quality “McJobs” to replace high-skilled work in old manufacturing industries.

David Fairhurst, the group’s “chief people officer”, told the Financial Times: “One day I’d love to see us doing a PhD, I definitely think we should go as far as we can.”

Mr Fairhurst said, however, that McDonald’s wanted initially to make sure it had perfected training in its growing range of other qualifications before embarking on a postgraduate degree.

The company’s ambition is not as bizarre as it might sound to the average visitor to a McDonald’s restaurant.

The company has developed a reputation over recent years for its training. It took a further step towards educational respectability last year when it became one of Britain’s first employers to win the power to award its own nationally recognised qualifications. McDonald’s has taken advantage of this to start offering courses in basic shift management that are equivalent to A-levels.

These teach “the whole dynamics about customer interactions”, stretching even to the hardships of “dealing with aggressive customers” and “safety during the night-time shift”. They also deal with less dangerous but equally sensitive matters, such as how to approach and aid unserved customers wandering around at the front of the restaurant.

Mr Fairhurst said its new awarding power had made it “a university in its own right”. About 2,500 people were currently signed up to the shift management course, he said.

In a strange flip of burger fate, this included “a few hundred” university graduates, he said, who were complementing their three years in academia with the course’s highly practical training.

But it does not stop there – Mr Fairhurst wants to award qualifications in “higher level management development” which are equivalent to university degrees.

The CPO said McDonald’s had become an attractive employer both to graduates and other workers, in large part because of its training, with its status as an awarding body adding to the prestige of its qualifications. The company also offers a “flexibility” that suited young people studying at university, including “McTime” – a system that allows workers to change their shifts via their mobile phones.

Mr Fairhurst rebutted the idea that a surge in job applications to McDonald’s – which he says has reached 30 for each available job at some branches – was mainly because of the recession.

Aside from McDonald’s, eight employers and employer groups have won the right to award their own qualifications since last year. The government has encouraged them because it wants more workers to have nationally recognised certificates that increase their employability across the economy.