A Preliminary Examination of Stimulating and Building University-Industry Collaborative Works at a Public University

Vitalization of University and industry collaboration (UIC) is at the forefront of higher education policy making at institutional and national levels. It benefits both the industries and higher institutions with the sharing of expertise and knowhow. Industry players are investing in innovation, research and development to stay ahead of global competition. It is with this lead of future potentials and opportunities that this study was conducted on university and industry collaboration between Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) an anchor institution located in Batu Pahat with the industries. The respondents are the Deans, Deputy Deans and Head of Departments. Sources of external funding, adequacy of laboratory equipment, types of services offer to the industry, nature of UIC interaction and coordination were reported. Discussion and suggestion of approaches to UIC from the findings reported in this paper were also drawn from previous works and the authors´ personal knowledge and experiences for stimulating and building collaboration works.