NATIONAL Commercial Bank (NCB) yesterday announced that it would build a business university to train its 1,800 staff and the general public.

“AIC and NCB, under the auspices of Michael Lee Chin, is committed to build a world class university in this country that will train business people, primarily for AIC and NCB, but will also help in the integration of Government and business people,” Aubyn Hill, NCB’s managing director, told a Kingston Rotary Club meeting yesterday.

“Lee Chin does not think it will happen overnight but we have gone far in the discussion in getting the land and NCB/AIC will be doing all the building,” Hill said.

Sources at the bank suggest the university would probably be in St Catherine.

“It must be close to Kingston because we want to be close to the UWI and the business centre of Kingston where we can interact and our students benefit from that interaction. We expect to go forward soon with some announcement as to where it should be and then when we will start building,” hinted Hill.

There are currently three universities in Jamaica — University of the West Indies (UWI); University of Technology (UTech); and the Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville. There is a slew of other institutions linked to these three which offer tertiary and near tertiary certification.

NCB currently has a staff training school at Altamont Crescent in New Kingston but has plans to expand that school, mirroring corporate universities aboard such as GM University or McDonald’s University.

In such universities curricula are tailored to the professional needs and challenges facing employees. Most of the classes are lecture-based and in a traditional classroom format.

Hill said the NCB university should not be integrated with the other universities. “UWI and UTech, they are doing a wonderful job but we need to have more tertiary universities where people can go and train,” he told Rotarians.

Added Hill: “Lee Chin went to India a few months ago to talk to Infosys Ltd, the people who just put in the technological backbone for NCB. And they created a university to train their people and to make sure that they have the best minds at world-class level.”

Lee Chin paid J$6.03 billion for the Jamaican Government’s 75 per cent stake in NCB in January 2002.