A case-study of tertiary institutions and industries in Nigeria.
Many developing countries suffer economic setbacks as a result of a huge gap between their academia and industry. A major expression of this disconnect is industries’ rare usability of the knowledge gained in the higher institutions, especially from the results/outcomes of research projects.
For instance, higher education institutes at various levels in Nigeria graduate over 600,000 students (asides from postgraduate students) yearly. These students spend an average of $47 on research. Unfortunately, most of these projects find zero to little application in the real-world industries after completion, leading to an estimated loss of $28,200,200 in value of undocumented projects that could positively impact the over 73,000 Nigerian registered SMSEs in terms of innovation, expansion, and revenue among others.
This huge waste of resources is easily traceable to the absence of a central platform for accessing, discussing, and managing research projects from higher institutions in Nigeria.
To solve this problem, there is a need to find practicable means of connecting academia and industry towards fostering knowledge sharing, problem-solving, etc. In our next post, we will be sharing more about how the industry and academia can build mutually productive and rewarding relationships.
In the meantime, we will love to hear your feedback/comments on the topic of academia and industry disconnect. Do you think this is a major problem behind economic setbacks in developing nations? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments…
