MANAGEMENT OF USIM’S INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENTS IN POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC: STUDENTS SURVEY

Abstract

The spread of Covid-19 pandemic has impacted negatively on the whole world community. As a result, almost 4 billion people or half of the world’s population face ‘lockdown’ or movement control at home or in quarantine cenres at the end of year 2020. This situation hit the whole world community as it restricted all international movements and borders closure for all travel purposes including tourism, business and education. Although the world will eventually withdraw this restriction policy when the situation recovers, this new norm of life will for a long period of time. The negative impact of this pandemic is no exception at the tertiary level, including international students who have to switch to fully online teaching & learning activities for the rest of their studies. The struggles faced by this category of students may not be given special attention as they are a minority group in the university. Thus, this study aims to obtain the views of international graduate students on the aspect of readiness and experience in facing the challenges of online teaching & learning process during the pandemic. Findings from these quantitative data are used as a basis for proposing management policies for post-pandemic international graduate students. This study collected data through questionnaires distributed to 130 current international graduate students who are pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM). The results of the study showed that most of the graduate international students at USIM did not face major problems in following online teaching & learning during Covid-19 pandemic. However, the minority of students also need to be given priority to avoid drop out from the university. The study also shows that the aspects of welfare and accessibility to university’s facilities are the main issues that need to be addressed by the university.