Identifying and Ranking the Critical Success Factors of Challenges in Providing Quality Education by the Malaysian Private Higher Learning Institutions

Abstract

The issue of quality education in higher learning institutions is timely and crucial due to the government's aspiration to turn Malaysia into a centre of educational excellence in the Asian region. Quality education acts as an indicator of the institution's ability to provide tertiary education to the society as well as an instrument for the nation's economic growth. Till date, numerous studies have been conducted in measuring the quality of education in higher learning institutions. However, the task in identifying the challenges faced by the institutions in providing quality education and the critical success factors to address those challenges are largely been ignored by previous researchers. Thus, by applying the mixed methods approaches, this study intends to identify and rank the challenges and critical success factors for each challenge. Data are collected from the Malaysian private higher learning institution's stakeholders for both stages namely; the qualitative and quantitative stage. Thematic analysis is utilised in identifying the challenges and critical success factors that gained through the semi structured interviews with the respondents. Subsequently, a survey is conducted to rank the identified challenges and critical success factors by employing the Analytic Hierarchy Process. At