Public value dimensions and characteristics of future university

Abstract

Nowadays, higher education has already progressed beyond the traditional settings where university plays the role of country’s innovation excellence by recognizing some research universities in Malaysia. The rapid change of higher education system in Malaysia is in line with the ministry’s higher education objective which is to establish a world-class university system in Malaysia. This evolution of education might increase the expectation of public value in the university. Therefore, there is a need to re-evaluate public value expectation from the point of view of various stakeholders such as academic administrators. At the same time, the characteristics of future university should be anticipated as we are moving towards the future. The concepts of public value have been discussed and debated frequently by many researchers in value literature. However, there is still lack of research in public value concept which focuses directly on the scope of higher education especially in Malaysia. This research aims to know what constitutes university public values in the future, particularly Malaysian Public Research University. There are two objectives that have been outlined, which are to know what constitutes university public value in the future and to examine how administrators anticipate the characteristics of future university. The research is conducted by distributing questionnaires to heads of departments at five Malaysian research universities. Data from the questionnaires were analyzed by factor analysis, descriptive analysis and mean score value. From this research, there are ten dimensions that constitute university public value in higher education institution (balancing interests, sustainability, user focus, rule abidance, professionalism, lean thinking, efficient supply, budget keeping, the public at large, and innovative). Beside that, there are nine anticipated characteristics of future university (dynamic environment, democratization of knowledge, sustainable infrastructure, global mobility, technology advancement, institutional autonomy, teaching-research balance, smart partnership, and abundant resources). The academic administrators perceived all these public dimensions as highly important in carrying out their tasks at the university. Similar to that, the characteristics of future university are also highly agreeable. Therefore, there is a need to enhance each of the dimensions and characteristics towards shaping a great university in the future.