A brief account of the post-mortem of an offshore graduate engineering programme: Feasibility check

The recent nationwide audit of graduate programmes offered at public universities by the Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA) has, in a way, opened up a can of wriggly worms! Albeit the admittedly onerous process of gathering and compiling the evidence in preparation for the audit, a substantial number of issues, either previously overlooked or unforeseen, has been ascertained. One of these in UTHM was found to be concerning the ‘offshore part-time’ engineering programme. The specific issues identified were on the aspects of services, delivery and assessment. Considering that the programme has been running for a number of years now, this paper attempts to elaborate on these the components as a postmortem exercise, i.e. to organize the relevant matters into context for future improvement. In short, the nationwide audit mechanism, which is not unlike going over things with a fine-tooth comb, has kick-started similar rigorous self-assessment at the institutional level, to distinguish between good practices and the less satisfactory ones for continuous improvement. As such, the post-mortem demonstrated a small but significant part of this unique self-regulatory effort at the University, substantiated by the findings obtained and reported here.