Development of a university-industry collaboration model towards work-ready engineering graduates

ABSTRACT

Background

One of the many challenges faced by universities in developing countries is to equip graduates with practical skills and knowledge for the demanding workforce. The traditional textbook-oriented lecture lacks up-to-date industrial practices.

Background

Purpose: This study highlights the development of a university-industry collaboration model for producing work-ready engineering graduates. An experienced practising engineer from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman’s Industry Advisory Panel representing Techkem Group was invited as a guest lecturer for two undergraduate engineering elective courses. Besides conventional lectures and tutorial sessions, the invited guest lecturer with vast industrial exposure also demonstrated actual engineering equipment working principles to the undergraduate students.

Sample

A total of 80 final year students and 10 lecturers took part to provide the feedback.

Design and methods

Feedback from students and lecturers was analyzed to determine the acceptance level towards incorporating industrial practice knowledge in these elective courses.

Results

The integration of current industrial practices into these courses has shown encouraging response from both students and lecturers with scoring between 80.8 and 93.3 points out of the maximum 100 points.

Conclusions

Positive results from the respondents have paved the path for the future development of such collaboration. Corporate social responsibility engagement by the industry as well as initiative to improve the teaching and learning process for elective courses by the university are essential aspects for a mutually beneficial collaboration in this model.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility
• elective course
• engineering graduate
• university-industry
• work-ready

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to Techkem Group and the Department of Chemical Engineering, LKC FES, UTAR for all the assistance and support to complete this corporate social responsibility (CSR) project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Techkem Group Corporate Affairs and Responsibility (TechCARe) fund [CSR18-WES2535].