INDUSTRIAL ATTACHMENT PROGRAMME: THE DILEMMA OF BOLGATANGA POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS

Industrial attachment is a programme organized by polytechnics in Ghana to give practical training to their students. It is supposed to give opportunity to the students to have a first hand workplace experience on what pertains at their chosen field of study.
Students on industrial attachment are expected to acquire some specific skills which are to be assessed at the end of the programme by lecturers of the polytechnic coordinated by the industrial liaison office because polytechnic education in Ghana is supposed to be career focused.
The study sought to unearth the mystery surrounding industrial attachment programe in Bolgatanga polytechnic. Questionnaire formed the principal instrument for data collection and was a four point Likert scale type. A sample size of 220 students from the nine departments in the school were used for the study
Frequencies of responses were aggregated and converted into percentages to know what the state of industrial attachment in the school was.
The findings from the study indicated that industrial attachment was ineffectively organized by the school, there were insufficient workplaces to absorb students of the polytechnic in the Upper East region of Ghana, some firms/institutions were unwilling to accept students, some students did not have interest in the programme and the non- scoring of industrial attachment in the school made students not to be seriousness with the whole programme. Some suggestions are made concerning how some of the issues may be resolved. These included orientation of students on the programme, rejuvenating industrial linkages and scoring the programme as a credit hour paper .