The arrest of Frank Stronach for alleged sexual assaults spanning from the 1980s to last year brought back memories of my time at Magna International in the 1980s.
In 1985, I was among a handful of high-school students interviewed by Mr. Stronach and selected by him for a sponsorship to GMI (now Kettering University) in Flint, Mich. The university is often described as the “West Point” of the auto industry. Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, is a graduate. As a tool and die maker, Mr. Stronach was partial to the university’s approach to engineering education because it emulated the structure of an apprenticeship program. We students would toggle back and forth between Magna and school every three months, in a program designed to produce a crop of engineers with an intimate knowledge of the company and its way of doing business.
