Quality of university life for UiTM students

Abstract

Universities are now are required to be responsive to student expectations To become a university of choice, university administrators need to understand student experiences in their university and how to improve the student's experiences so that a positive image will be portrayed to the prospective students. Therefore measuring student's university experience is vital. The main objective of this paper is to examine student' perceptions about their university experience. A survey research design was used in this study to investigate student's university experience. The instrument developed and used for this study was adapted from the Monash Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) and Melbourne Experience Survey. Modifications are made to make it suitable for UiTM culture. There are 66 items in the questionnaire which are grouped into 8 dimensions, comprising of (1) Skills Development, (2) Program Quality, (3) Student Support, ( 4) Teaching Quality, (5) Learning Environment and Resources, (6) Learning Community, (7) Academic Guidance and (8) Campus Experience. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study based on the sampling frame received from each campus. About 3,200 questionnaires were distributed to 14 campuses and 1167 usable questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 36 percent. Data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential analysis including factor analysis. The study found that majority of the students had a positive university experience in UiTM. The dimension which has the highest mean score was campus experience and the lowest mean score was learning environment and resources. The dimensions are rank based on their mean score value. The researchers had employed the Cronbach Alpha technique to obtain the reliability index of the instrument used. The reliability index was computed for the various mentions using the survey results. Reliability index for each dimension used is more than 0.80. The overall reliability index of the instrument is 0.94 and is deemed reliable. Limitations of the study and future research are also discussed in this paper. The study suggested some recommendations to improve the quality of university life for students.