Knowledge Management Issues in Higher Education Institutions: Still Unresolved Issues?

In placing Malaysian education on the global map, the education system in Malaysia has undergone a series of changes in the early twenty-first century. The higher education institutions (HEI) were said facing difficulties in managing high expectations from their stakeholders, in ensuring the curriculums are always mapped to the industrial needs. The higher education authority has highlighted that curriculum review has not been given serious attention by HEI and this might give impact to the quality of graduates produced by HEI. The purpose of the qualitative study is to demonstrate the current discovery of knowledge management themes in HEI which emerge after close analysis from interviews using curriculum review as the context of the study. A qualitative approach using a single case study was employed in ensuring appropriate exploration of the context in selected case sites. Data collection method was conducted using interviews, before the analysis using the thematic approach took place. The themes then were analyzed and finally derived into four main issues in managing HEI knowledge that are (1) knowledge is scattered and isolated, (2) knowledge is inaccessible, (3) knowledge is unstructured, and finally (4) knowledge quality is unverified. It was found that this result matched with early studies of literature reviewed. The study contributed toward the understanding and conforming to the current knowledge management issues in HEI looking into curriculum review lens. This study might be the best approach for the HEI before moving into knowledge management approaches to overcome the knowledge discovered issues. This study could be expanded in the future by using multiple case studies and focusing on various contexts of knowledge in HEI.