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Evidently, the emerging field of postgraduate study in higher education faces
many different types of problems. One problem is limited research on postgraduate
programmes due to their relative newness in higher education. Another is that the
few available programmes in higher education have not developed a conceptual
framework for analysing and describing their course offerings. Hence, the nature
and structure of doctoral programmes in higher education in Malaysian universities
remain unknown and therefore undefined. Finally, the knowledge, expertise and
skills needed for building capacity in higher education and for developing the capac-
ity to study higher education are also still inadequate.
Research
Research is the basis for developing higher education as a field of study, for teaching
programmes that have relevant content and for informing decision-makers. The
best, but not exclusive, way of understanding what higher education research is
being done in Malaysia is to map research output in terms of publication.
Nevertheless, this is an impossible task as there is no database available for higher
education research or expertise. The only resource centre that has a specialist col-
lection on higher education research is IPPTN which has been steadily building up
its collection over the past 8 years.
With regard to the development of higher education research, we argue that it has
achieved impressive progress in the last one decade. This is attributed to the increas-
ing government funding for research towards improving the higher education sys-
tem, which is considered as the main factor for the development of higher education
as a field of specialty worldwide (Altbach 2001 , 2006 ). The Malaysian government
requires national data and research for the purpose of informing higher education
policy and strategic planning with the new transformation plan. Not surprisingly, we
tend to see that with the MoHE and MoE as the main funders for higher education
research, the bulk of the research tends to be more closely related to government
policymaking. Within such an environment, where the research does not contribute
much to the corpus of knowledge, the building of a systematic, programmatic
knowledge base in the field of higher education remains unlikely to materialize.
Consequently, theory development and underpinning are found to be among the
most underdeveloped dimensions of the Malaysian higher education policy research
output. Only a couple of fragmented theories, or rather theoretical elements, are
uncovered from the empirical research projects. Few researchers employ any theo-
ries to undergird their studies, and as researchers come from all fields, researchers
with an intention to develop or enhance theories are even fewer, particularly when
the aim is to recommend strategic policies. This is further compounded by the fact
that a section on ‘theory’ in the design of the many policy studies tends to take sec-
ond place, and even when it is available, it lacks meaningful analysis and synthesis.
Consequently, the field in Malaysia has what Jones ( 2012 , p.714) describes as
N. Azman and M. Sirat