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:
In sum, the PRT team acknowledges the effort made by the School to adhere to the continuous improvement process as stipulated by ABEST21. Nevertheless, the School needs to develop strategies for quality improvement based on issues identified for each area, and put them in detail for the next 3-year action plan. One of the plans that needs clarification is becoming financially sustainable in the future.
The School has identified many issues when preparing the SCR. Now it needs to develop action plans to address these issues, and thus work towards improvement on each ABEST21’s standard. The plans should correspond to the School’s capabilities and resources. They should be tangible, with a clear objective and expected outcome. This will enable the School to implement them and to monitor the progress.
Specifically, the School needs to provide the quantitative measures to answer the following questions:
- What percentage of the curriculum accommodates the needs of the industry?
- How many academic collaborations with industries will be developed over a certain period (next year, next two years, etc.)?
- How does the School measures quality of the new student intake?
- What capabilities of the existing staff need to be improved?
- What increase in the number of international students (in %) will be achieved over a certain period (next year, next two years, etc.)?
The School also needs to explain clearly how Assurance of Learning process works, and how the information/feedback from the process is used to improve the curriculum.
The School should also clarify how it finances the research through collaborating with industries.
In terms of teaching, faculty members’ achievements are commendable, but their performance in research and publishing is still below expectations. Administrative staff also needs more development. Merdeka Curriculum has to be incorporated in a revised curriculum.
2. Good Practice in the Program Management Education
Title:
“Humanizing the Bachelor of Management Program”
Reasons:
The program developed by the Graduate Employability Development Center (GEDC) as well as the Bridging program seems to be a good practice by the School to humanize its education program. Through the programs, students are equipped with necessary soft skills before they leave the School.
3. Matters to be noted
The PRT team feels that the School needs to focus on the following matters:
- Comprehensive explanation on its quality improvement process, the PDCA cycle that it has adopted for the three-year plan for its education and research processes. Break them into short-term, mid-term and long-term plans.
- Clear description of the Assurance of Learning (AOL) process that is being practiced by the School, and indicating the corrective action taken based on the issues found during the meeting.
- The School needs to integrate the Merdeka Curriculum in its Action Plan 1, 2 and 3 as well as strategy to intensify its research and publication activities in the coming years, since it plans to be a research-centered university by 2032.
- The School needs to develop alternative financial strategy to ensure its financial sustainability besides focusing solely on tuition fees.