10 th AASVET Conference 2014 1 DETERMINING THE ISSUES AND CONCERN IN MALAYSIA’S TVET AGENCY-INDUSTRY ENGAGEMENT Zool Hilmi Mohamed Ashari 1 , Mohamad Sattar Rasul 2 Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Bangi, Selangor, MALAYSIA Corresponding author: zoolashari@gmail.com The needs for highly skilled manpower could be achieved through the active industry involvement in Technical and Vocational Education (TVET). The Malaysian industry have indicated their interest in supporting the TVET sector, however, the strength of actual collaboration between the industry and TVET agency is still weak and need to be improved. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the current issues, concerns and barriers in TVET agency-industry engagement. A systematic review has been used to provide a summary of literature of the emerging issues in TVET agency- industry collaboration and to suggest certain measures to reinforce strategic TVET agency-industry relationship and cooperation in order to rationalize it into more efficient approach that matches the government needs. Keywords: Technical and vocational education, skilled workforce, industry engagement, partnership, Malaysia 1. Introduction Engagement between the education and training sectors with the industry is one of the forms of collaboration that exists to achieve shared goals for example by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. A successful collaboration will depend largely on the strategic and tactical approaches made by the education and training agencies as one of the party or collaborators. There are some types of collaborations that resulting in a win-win situation for both collaborators. It can be shaped in ways such as research, research consultancy, staff attachment, student internship, student placement, examination of student scholastic achievement, and etc. (Liew, Shahdan, & Lim, 2012). Usually, the objectives of the collaboration is to strengthen relationships with industry, job placement for the students, identify the need for new courses and increase the added value of a service or product (Minghat, Yasin, Subari, & Noordin, 2013). Another aim of the collaboration is to shape the training curriculum to determine the skills required by the industry. According to Minghat et al., (2013) if an institution wants graduates can work and succeed in a career of work, the education curriculum must be fresh and in accordance with the requirements. While Poonam (2013) stated that the collaboration between training provider and the industry must address the issues of skill requirements, international benchmarking of skill standards and competency assessment, comparability of qualifications and suchlike. From the perspective of higher education, forming cooperative education programs with the industry has been the practice of most universities to ensure the employability of their graduates and to ensure that the knowledge impart on the skills required by the industries (Idrus, Dahan, & Abdullah, 2013). This is accomplished through student and staff industrial attachments, advisory boards, and by recruiting industry practitioners to teach at the University. Another collaboration also can be seen from the perspective of TVET agencies. VET providers plays the main providers of labor force training required to revitalize the attractiveness of businesses and industries. To remain competitive and viable in the world market, companies must obtain highly skilled workers to keep enterprises sustainable in a global economy. So that, collaboration between TVET providers and industry can be a mutually