UoN to launch graduate school of business for top managers

Corporate News

The Fountain of Knowledge at University of Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE 

By JAMES KARIUKI

In Summary

• Plans to establish the school are driven by demand and availability of human resource capacity.

The University of Nairobi (UoN) is set to launch a graduate business school.

Vice-chancellor Peter Mbithi said plans to establish the school were driven by demand and availability of human resource capacity.

He said the move would see the industry engage the academia often thereby helping churn out employable graduates.

“Our decision to establish the graduate business school is an irreversible response to the market demands. Let us partner with industry to bring the best experiences to graduate business School,” he said Thursday at a meeting of private sector leaders and academics.

During the meeting, it emerged that Kenyan companies and State agencies spent millions of shillings sending their executives abroad for specialised training in management and entrepreneurship, among other specialised courses, even though the UoN has the capacity to teach the course.

Businessman Chris Kirubi said time had come for Kenyan universities to conduct local case studies that would be incorporated in learning.

He said this would discard current practice where case studies mostly embrace foreign research papers that focus on business models of foreign companies.

Business links

The participants proposed that the private sector’s input into academic programmes be incorporated through establishment of a permanent seat for private sector players at the soon to be established graduate business school.

Mr Kirubi said launch of the school was long overdue, adding that it would present the university a fertile source of business links, enabling it to raise funds for future academic programmes and research.

Participants said the graduate school would also bring together chief executives, creating a ready pool of deal makers capable of driving business to a higher level.

IBM’s Kenya office also offered to partner with the university in creating a data analytics hub, an essential component in today’s business environment for strategies in business growth.

The private sector-academia link would also help bridge the existing gap blamed for continued training of students in unmarketable courses thereby flooding the market with unemployable graduates.

Prof Mbithi called for partnership between the academia and corporate companies to create a platform for solving local challenges on job creation, new products and collection of more taxes.