Role of academic advising in mitigating the challenges of ethnic minority students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Abstract

The paper investigated the academic advising experiences of ethnic minority students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). The main purpose of the paper was to examine the challenges faced and coping strategies used by the ethnic minority students as well as the role of academic advisors to ensure that students from ethnic minorities are able to complete their studies within the stipulated period of time. An in-depth interview was conducted to collect data. The interview was recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data qualitative were analyzed in the form of thematic analysis using NVivo10. The analysis revealed that ethnic minority students experienced many challenges and problems during their studies at UTM. The results revealed that communication barrier is one of the challenges that ethnic students faced during their studies. To overcome, these challenges and problems they learned and applied different coping strategies. In spite of those efforts, the ethnic students still require additional help and support from their academic advisors.