UNIVERSITI Sains Malaysia (USM) in collaboration with IBM Malay- sia Sdn Bhd will start an execu- tive MBA programme on service science, management and engineering (SSME) for the next academic session.
Its vice-chancellor Prof Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak said the university had been working with IBM for some time on this programme which is the first of its kind in the country.
“A memorandum of understan-ding (MOU) was signed with the company managing direc- tor Ou Shian Waei yesterday to counter the lack of talents in this field which is crucial to sus-tain and develop the nation’s eco-nomy.
“The university is also sponsoring a post-doctorate scheme to qualified individuals who will spend a year or so with us to help develop the new SSME programme,” he told reporters yesterday.
Joint venture:Ou(centre)shaking hands with Prof Dzulkifli.With them is IMB marketing director Eric Wong.
Dzulkifli said most of the top universities in the United States such as the University of Califor-nia in Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also had such programmes.
Ou said IBM had been working closely with universities worldwide to create this programme which was aimed at equipping students with an integrated mix of business, technology and people skills.
“The need for such a programme is needed as the services sector is expected to register an annual growth rate of 7.5% between now and 2020 and its contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2020 will be about 60% of the GDP.
“SSME is an academic discipline and research area that will complement rather than replace the many other disciplines that contribute to knowledge about ser-vice. The company will share all its research materials with USM and also make available its laboratories.
“Other universities with similar programmes are Deakin University in Australia, Tsinghua University and Peking Univeristy in China, New Zealand’s Auckland University and others in Taiwan, Thailand and India,” he said.
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