Industrial attachment and human capital of higher education students: constraints of Ghanaian technical universities

Purpose The paucity of empirical evidence on the limitations of the industrial attachment programme of technical universities for enhancing students' human capital in Africa tends to thwart concrete policy options. Design/methodology/approach The study used the convergent mixed methods including 594 surveys, two focus groups and in-depth interviews to assess and accentuate the research gap in this study. Findings Evidence of constraints linked to the industrial attachment programme for developing students' human capital needs include limited funding, logistics and incentive for supervision, incompatible placement and exploitation and sexual harassment of students. Insufficient duration and intrusion of the industrial attachment programme due to labour unrests, inadequate collaboration and fears of student interns breaching organisations' confidentiality policies were also found to hinder the programme. Research limitations/implications The study's dependence on participants' perspectives has the possibility of being characterised by recollection prejudice. The comparatively limited scope and size of the study participants creates concerns of representativeness and generalisability of the study outcome. Practical implications The outcome of this study could yield significant practical implications for the planning and operations of the industrial attachment programme of tertiary institutions. It also provides information which could serve as the basis for future research and comprehensive evaluation of the programme's planning and implementation. Originality/value The authors have delineated empirical evidence on the constraints of the industrial attachment programme of Ghanaian technical universities to inform policy decisions on the planning, operations, funding and evaluation of the programme in collaboration with industry and government.