Perceptions and Expectations of Students towards the Role of Academic Advisors in Malaysian Public Universities

Abstract

Academic advising is affected by the expectations and perceptions of students towards the role of academic advisors. This study examines Malaysian public university students’ perception and expectation towards the role of academic advisors. In this study, students’ expectations refer to students’ assumptions regarding the role of academic advisors upon their tertiary education registration while students’ perceptions refer to the students’ assumptions six months after registration for tertiary education. A self-developed questionnaire measuring students’ perception and expectation towards academic advisors through academic, personnel, social and career development, was used for this study. The questionnaire was validated and piloted on randomly selected 40 undergraduate students. The reliability of the questionnaire using the alpha Cronbach was .809. A simple random sampling was used to select a total of 400 students from two Malaysian public universities to participate in this study. Data analysis revealed that at the early stage of tertiary education, students have high expectations towards the role of academic advisors but after six months of living on campus their perception towards the role of academic advisors decreases. The study provides several justifications for the decreasing towards the role of academic advisors.