Causes and Solutions for Student Delays in Filing Property Management Reports in Higher Education

Causes and Solutions for Student Delays in Filing Property Management Reports in Higher Education

Noorsidi Aizuddin Mat Noor^1,2, Ainul Farahin Saifuding², Fitriyah Razali^1,2, Nurul Syakima Mohd Yusoff², Siti Zaleha Daud², Farhana Diana Deris³, Chin Swee Lee², Mustafa Omar⁴

¹Centre for Real Estate Studies (UTM CRES), Institute for Smart Infrastructure and Innovative Construction (ISIIC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

²Mass Appraisal, Housing and Planning Research Group, Real Estate Department, Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia

³Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia

⁴Real Asset Research Group, Real Estate Department, Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.804076

Received: 29 March 2024; Accepted: 03 April 2024; Published: 06 May 2024

ABSTRACT

An efficient Property Management in Higher Education will enable their business to sustain at an efficient and effective cost. A higher education organization property management exercise is necessary in order to achieve the business’s goals. It is apparent that the lecture room equipment and assets are no less important to lecturers and students since they spend the majority of their time there while imparting knowledge. It is desirable for all parties involved in the lecture to ensure that the lecture room facilities are in good condition. Therefore, the failure of equipment is caused by consumers who do not care and delay in filing their property management reports or complaints with the administration. Factor limitations of this study to final year students due to the experience gathered by fourth year students are more significant than the other year of students level. The amount allocated for upgrading lecture room facilities grows year after year. The new equipment and assets will allow the lecturer to effectively conduct the teaching process while the students can study in the comfortable lecture room environment.  As a result, the goal of this research is to identify the factors that cause students to delay filing their reports with the administration, as well as to examine effective measures to reduce the problem of students delaying filing their property management reports or complaints. Several methods are used to achieve the objective, including Frequency Analysis, Likert Scale, and Rank Cases. In conclusion, the results or findings can assist the faculty management concerned in improving and upgrading their weaknesses, particularly their complaint system.

Keywords: Property Management, Report, Complaint, Facility, Lecture Room, Student, Malaysia

INTRODUCTION

Malaysian higher education is growing due to an increase in the number of public and private higher education institutions. One of the most important factors influencing the direction of Higher Education Institutions is the desire to be the best educational institutions in the world, producing high-quality products that compete at the highest level. This is due to economic stimulus and government aid. Reference [21] stated that the demand for effective property management began in the 1800s, with several developments contributing to a significant shift in the management of building assets and equipment. In general, a facility is a piece of property owned by an organisation that assists residents in achieving their business goals. While educational facilities were intended to provide a comfortable learning environment and pique students’ interest [24]. Understanding the entire life cycle costing of property management equipment is also critical to keeping the institutions in good condition [23].

However, educational facilities include buildings, learning equipment, lecture rooms, libraries, toilets, computer labs, cafeterias, furnishings, landscaping, and other items where the State Board of Education determines that access to education is required [10]. According to [29], facilities at higher education institutions include buildings, classrooms, residential colleges, worker quarters, workshops, ICT centres, libraries, and a healthcare centre.

According to [14],[33], the maintenance management process begins with a student complaint, which leads to the student reporting the damage to management. According to [1], a complaint is a way to express dissatisfaction with a situation that demonstrates weakness. However, [8] claims that the user was the first to notice the building’s damage and defects. As a result, complaints from users are critical in determining the existence of any damage to buildings, and they are a reasonable alternative method for detecting a malfunction that has occurred [28][32].

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are an excellent place to seek knowledge while also producing excellent students [9]. HEI will be able to produce high quality products that are competitive on a global scale. As a result, a conducive educational environment that promotes the improvement of high-quality, comfortable, and cheerful educational facilities is critical because it can help students focus on achieving their goals [39].

According to [2], good maintenance can benefit institutions by attracting students, workers, and international students, as well as direct student interest in teaching and learning quality. It is obvious that if a building is not properly maintained, it will suffer damage, which will reflect negatively on the university and result in fewer students enrolling. Educational equipment is equipment that is required by the student during the learning process [35]. It is a device that is easily damaged if not properly maintained. Damage will cause a great deal of trouble for consumers, primarily due to losses and an increase in repair costs.

However, what concerns us today is that the facility in a university building has been poorly maintained, which will almost certainly cause serious damage and necessitate significant maintenance costs. Consumers, particularly students, also contributed a problem during the maintenance process [4],[5],[6]. One of the primary causes of lecture room equipment failure is a consumer attitude that does not care and is slow to report complaints or damage to the administration [17],[19].

Among the issues identified by the pilot survey conducted at the Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and nowadays has been renamed as Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia  were the hustle and bustle of daily duty, which limits student movement. The limited time makes it difficult for students to file a complaint within a set timeframe, resulting in a waste of time and energy. Individuals or students who wish to file a complaint should typically fill out a complaint form that management has manually prepared. While students are usually unable to carry out the process of filing complaints at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) due to poor internet connectivity, the university has implemented an online complaint service through the website.

As a result, a pilot study was conducted to identify the factors that contribute to the slow resolution of student complaints to the faculty administration. The pilot study was conducted at the Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. There were 52 out of 60 students in the pilot study who responded to the factors that cause students to complain slowly to faculty management about facility damage. It considers factors such as time, complaint system, complaint process, management, and student attitude.

This study was conducted to achieve the objective of reviewing the factors that caused students to file slow complaints to faculty management and taking effective action to reduce the problem of student delays in filing the property management reports.

LITERATURE REVIEWS

A facility is something that makes work or tasks easier. A facility is a support system that assists an organisation in achieving its objectives. In the context of higher education institutions and educational institutions such as schools, good infrastructure can assist the organisation in efficiently achieving its goals in terms of learning process concentration.

Education facilities are viewed as a tool that can aid in the process of learning. According to a study conducted by [3], whiteboards, bulletin boards, and overhead projectors are examples of learning aid equipment. According to [41], the educational equipment required in the classroom includes a computer, lighting, a blackboard, seating, and air conditioning.

According to [7],[16], the maintenance management process begins with a complaint made by students, which leads students to report the damage to administration. According to [2],[22], a complaint is a way to express dissatisfaction with a situation that demonstrates weakness. The user was the first to notice the damage and defects in the building. As a result, complaints from users are critical in determining the presence of any damage to buildings and are a reasonable alternative method of detecting a malfunction [11],[31],[36].

Complaints are feedback from customers about the products and services provided. When a service failure is followed by customer dissatisfaction, complaints become one of the most important factors in restoring customer satisfaction with a service [13],[34],[38].

CAUSE OF SLOW COMPLAINTS AMONG STUDENTS

The Polytechnic Malaysia continues to use conventional methods to implement the system. It caused a lot of problems for the students because they had to fill out a large number of complaint forms and spend a lot of time doing so [40],[41]. It also requires students to come to the faculty to fill out forms, which will cause problems for them.

However, time constraints caused by having too many other tasks to complete can lead to a slow complaint [7]. This is because students do not have time to complain because they spend most of their free time in the classroom and discussing the assigned tasks after class.

According to [7],[12], filing a complaint manually is not a systematic method because it requires students to write a complaint in a book, and sometimes management overlooks the complaint and does not send it to the maintenance management team, resulting in no maintenance work being done. However, the use of paper-based complaint forms results in the management of difficulties to update the data recorded immediately, which will contribute to negligence, causing maintenance cannot be performed by the maintenance management team [19],[20].

According to [26], a study was conducted on the University’s residential colleges, and it was discovered that the process for making complaints in residential colleges is less effective, which is one of the reasons why students are less likely to submit a complaint if there are defects in the vicinity. According to a pilot study conducted, some students believe that one of the causes of slow complaints is a lack of knowledge about where to file complaints.

Furthermore, one of the reasons why students are slow to file complaints is the management’s efficiency, which is taken for granted in response to user complaints. Aside from that, the student’s attitude is crucial in ensuring that a complaint is filed if there is damage. According to the pilot study, students are delay in filling the property management report due to a lack of awareness about the importance of educational facilities. However, the attitude due to the students’ laziness in dealing with management and assuming that other students will file a complaint about the damage are part of the scenario that have been identified.

EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS TOOL

The study discovered a number of effective medium tools for reducing the problem of students who are slow to file complaints with the management faculty [27],[30]. A complaint made through a web application is a suitable replacement for the previous manual complaint system. This is because the system is designed to speed up and simplify the process of implementing, managing, coordinating, and maintaining data management for damage in College Student Residence, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia [31].

The online complaints system is a more systematic tool for a student to file a complaint because it allows them to do so directly to the responsible party via the web. This system improves data storage and allows for proper preparation and maintenance of damage complaints to ensure a smooth maintenance process [27],[30],[38]. However, the online complaint system is the least important tool for students at UTM.

As a result, the use of communication via computer transmission is increasingly revealing its importance in day-to-day management, making a complaint via email important for students to save time in making a complaint consistent with the tools using a short message service (SMS) directly to the management office. This is because, according to [25], the use of short messaging service (SMS) is a platform for all road users in India because it allows them to easily send a complaint to the relevant authorities so that issues can be resolved quickly.

Aside from that, a complaint made through the Facebook application is one of the most important tools for the customer, especially for college or university students, as electronic media such as Twitter, Facebook, and others are now an integral part of student life on campus [15],[21],[22]. However, because the majority of college and university students are active Facebook users, Facebook and other social media platforms such as Twitter are the best places for them to express themselves [36].

METHODOLOGY

This stage necessitates planning, preferably for achieving research and fluency during this study. The research methodology also includes the methods and processes for conducting research studies to achieve the objectives. In this study, five stages are used: preliminary research, literature review, data collection, data analysis, and findings, recommendations, and conclusion.

Data were collected both primary and secondary. Primary data were collected through questionnaires distributed to final-year students at the Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate. In addition to primary data, this study uses secondary data in the form of reading materials such as journals, articles, books, previous studies, and so on. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) [37], which included frequency analysis, a Likert scale, and rank case analysis.

FINDINGS

Table 1 displays the mean score for the factor that causes slow complaints among students.  This mean analysis is used to determine the highest score across all of the questions. The highest score represents the most appropriate and best.

The highest mean score for a factor that causes a slow complaint among students is the student’s attitude that the damage is not their responsibility. The data analysed show that the lowest mean score is that the management staff is not friendly enough to students who wish to file a complaint, which falls under the management problem.

Based on Table 2, demonstrate that the effective medium for reducing the problem of slow complaints made by students. The table shows that the most important medium tool for reducing the problem is to file a complaint through the Facebook application, as students are now active Facebook users. The least important tool is to use the conventional method of filling out a complaint form at the management office.

Table 1. Respondent Mean Score For The Factor That Cause Of Slow Complaint Among Students.

Table 2. Effective Medium To Reduce The Cause.

CONCLUSION

An analysis was conducted to determine what factors should be considered by the parties involved in the faculty’s management. Overall, the study was successful because both objectives were met.

This study’s findings are based on the current situation, and the study can help to improve the existing complaints system. Furthermore, the study’s report can be used to strengthen the management of complaints to faculty in general, as well as to improve the quality of maintenance at Malaysian universities through well-planned maintenance.

According to the findings, a more systematic complaints system should be prioritised, which can be implemented at any time and from any location. As a result, the use of Facebook applications as the primary medium of a student complaint should be highlighted once more by the faculty, given Malaysia’s growing university student population.

The importance of involving all community entities in Higher Education Institutions to ensure that improvements in the use of technology for property management are implemented comprehensively. This approach will help to meet the current acceptance and demand for creating a better and more conducive environment in Malaysian higher education institutions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would also like to show our gratitude to the UTM Mass Appraisal, Housing and Planning Research Group members for sharing their pearls of wisdom with us during the course of this research, and we thank to our anonymous reviewers for their so-called insights although any errors are our own and should not tarnish the reputations of these esteemed persons.

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