Internationalisation of the curriculum in Malaysian Universities’ business faculties: Realities, implementation and challenges

Abstract

In today's increasingly globalised and integrated economy, the need for the internationalisation of post-secondary education curriculum cannot be over stressed. This is particularly pertinent to nations, such as Malaysia, with a fast growing number of international students and international universities. The experience and perception of academic staff of Malaysian universities' business faculties regarding the internationalisation of the business faculty curriculum is explored in this study. The central thrust of this study was to investigate the perception and experience of business faculties' academic staff on internationalising the business faculty curriculum in Malaysia. The study utilised the phenomenological approach. Data was collected through face-to-face interview with academic staff of business faculties from two universities using semi-structured interview. The responses were sorted into codes (open coding & analytical/axial coding) and analysed through continuous review of the participants' own words/phrases. Among the key findings of the study is that, most academic staff in Malaysian business faculties have the knowledge about internationalisation of the curriculum but lack the knowhow in the design and implementation. Vital recommendations including the need for regular capacity building trainings to be organised for academic staff to help develop relevant competence in the internationalisation of the curriculum were proposed.