The Effect of Academia-Industry Linkages for Sustainable Employment. The Mediating Role of Funding

The study's main goal was to ascertain how funding influences university-industry linkages and how it influences sustainable employment. The research design was triangulation (mixed method). The targeted population consisted of CCTU lecturers (N=175) with a sample of n=120 and 5 managers selected from organisations which has collaborated with CCTU. The Cochran sample size formula was used to determine the appropriate sample size. Stratification was the sampling technique used, and the respondents were chosen using a simple random method. The SEM-PLS (v. 4) and IBM SPSS software (v. 27) were used to analysed the data. The main findings were that university-industry linkages have a statistically significant positive direct effect on sustainable employability (UIL->SE, β=0.898, (95% CI-0.862, 0.927), t=55.03, p>0.05; R2=0.806). It was estimated that university-industry linkages accounted for an 80.6% effect on sustainable employment. Nevertheless, university-industry linkages still have a significant positive effect on sustainable employability when mediated through funding. (UIL->FUN->SE, β=0.872 and 0.278 (95% CI-0.862, 0.927), t=3.696, p˂0.05; R2 = 0.825. The model accounted for an 82.5% indirect effect when funding mediated between the studied variables. Again, the level of linkages is low; hence, there is a gap between the requisite manpower needs and technology transfer. At CCTU, student internships, workshop seminars, publications and reports, training courses, and consulting services were the main collaborations. The main sustainable skills for employability were personal qualities, core skills, and subject knowledge. It was recommended that the government should fund university-industry partnerships and that universities should intensify linkage programs and budget for linkage programs. Universities should collaborate with industry and NGOs to secure funding through joint research. Since linkages are low, the supervising authorities of the tertiary institutions should enforce the implementation of linkages policies in all universities.