1. Accreditation Comprehensive Review
Evaluation:
“ABEST21 certifies that the School’s educational and research activities generally satisfy accreditation standards. The School’s Kaizen plans are good and quality maintenance and prospects for the improvement of education and research are promising and good. Accreditation commences April 1, 2021 for a five-year period.”
PRT Comprehensive Comments:
Overall, the UTAR FAM MBA program has met the requirements for ABEST21 accreditation, although it still needs some comprehensive improvement across several areas, such as student admissions, balanced faculty composition (appropriate ratio of academics and practitioners), adequate educational and research support facilities for lecturers and students, so that educational goals and mission can be achieved properly.
Cooperation between the School and its academic and industrial partners, both domestic and international, needs to be continuously improved to promote globalization of the School.
In terms of governance, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of the systems that support the school’s administrative and academic process as well as the decisions made by the management of the school. Technically, the appendix provides more information on the School’s academic and administrative systems, such as structure and procedures, but only very limited evidence concerning the outcomes of their operation.
2. Good Practice in the Program Management Education
Title:
“Understand and respect diversity”
Reasons:
MBA program that promotes understanding and respect for diversity, including but not limited to culture, gender, age, ethnicity, political beliefs, and religious practices, is the cornerstone of management education now and in future.
3. Matters to be noted
- The School needs to ensure the balance between academically and practically qualified faculty members. It should also develop cooperation with industry and partner universities abroad.
- Efforts are needed to increase the number and qualifications of prospective students, because with a small number of students, it will be difficult to maintain the sustainability of this program.
- The improvement plan is not equipped with the achievement targets and required resources, so it is difficult to judge its success.
- The school needs to always support all of its arguments with data or evidence. The evidence should be given in the main text of the SCR or in the appendices. It will always be difficult to assess the achievements without supporting data or evidence. The effectiveness of all systems implemented by the School can be evaluated by the quality of the outcomes that result from these systems. That is why data or evidence will be more meaningful for evaluation than just the description of structure and procedures of a system.