Faktor Kejayaan Pengajian PhD Di Kalangan Staf Universiti Utara Malaysia – Kajian Fasa 1

In line with Malaysia's efforts to enhance the nation's knowledge and innovation capabilities and foster a first-class mindset, the National Higher Education Strategy (PSPTN) targets 75% of lecturers to have a PhD by 2020. However, despite the high number of academic staff increases every year, the number of lecturers that have a PhD qualification remains low. Therefore, this study aims to discuss the critical activities in the planning and implementation of the PhD study as well as looking at the factors that influence of the success in PhD graduation. The study also identifies the obstacles or problems encountered in PhD studies. This study has 2 sets of questionnaires that distributed to academic staff of Universiti Utara Malaysia. The first set was distributed via online to academic staff who had successfully completed their PhD studies which included questions of critical activities before and during the study and the factors of success. A total of 95 respondents answered and been used them for statistical analysis purposes. The second set was distributed through internal post by Registrar’s Department to academic staff who had not yet completed their studies. About 31 responded but only 29 were used for analysis. All data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences 22.0 software (SPSS). The findings from the descriptive analysis shows that the preparation of financial resources is the most critical activity before PhD study while the critical activity during the study is student self-management. Furthermore, for the factor of study success, the finding shows those financial factors are the main factor. Finally, there are several barrier factors that have been identified such as personal factor, place of study, academic preparation before further study, supervisor and process of research. The implications of this study can provide a good foundation for developing and formulating strategies and efforts to improve policy and monitoring methods in enhancing the number of PhD/Doctorate academic staff