Academia-Industry Linkages: Nurturing the Entrepreneurial Graduates – A Case Study at University Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)

Abstract

The increasing rate of unemployed graduates is one of the critical issues that triggers world's concerns lately. Malaysia’s recent upsurge in graduate unemployment has specific causes relating to economic development, education policy-making, and reforms in the economy as well as in higher education. In Malaysia, every year, almost 200,000 fresh graduates search for employment. Besides academic performance, it has been acknowledged that graduates should be equipped with industrial relevance skills to increase their marketability and competency rate. The Government of Malaysia also encourages active involvement of industries through strategic partnerships and joint ventures with higher education institutions in providing these relevant skills and training to the students. The purpose of this paper is to expose one of the programs called Hands-On Programme of Entrepreneurship (HOPE) which is being executed through the academia-industry linkages experienced by University Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) in nurturing the entrepreneurial graduates. This paper adopts a case study of HOPE at USIM and found that the involvement of industry is pivotal in tertiary education, especially in terms of students’ activities and development. Ultimately, this paper provides a new insight on the academia-industry linkages especially for nurturing students to have entrepreneurial attributes as one of soft-skills upon their graduation.