University-industry collaboration through industrial training program

As the first university to adopt the practice and application oriented education approach, all students in Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) are required to undertake Industrial Training (IT) in order to fulfill the diploma and bachelor degree requirements. This is to expose the students to the real working environment from the early stage of their professional development. Apart of it, is the university-industry partnership that provides and delivers high quality of technical and engineering education. This paper is about a research conducted on students that undertake 20 weeks IT for 2007/2008 academic session. The respondents are 245 students from the Faculty of Electronic and Computer Engineering (FKEKK) that have completed their IT either in public or private sector. Industries and students feedbacks are gathered and analyzed in order to study the impact of IT towards the students, university and industry. In addition, the data are analyzed to confirm whether the IT program is helping a good university-industry relationship and the possibility of university to collaborate with the industry. The results obtained will be used to improve the university-industry management in the future.