Compliance to Thesis Examination Procedure in the ISO Quality Management System for Teaching and Learning

Quality management system (QMS) for teaching and learning has been developed for the purpose of quality assurance and therefore must be updated and upgraded regularly. For the management of graduate studies, thesis examination procedure is a core process in the assessment of students and has remained as one of the quality objectives in the recently merged QMS. The study compares the compliance to this procedure from three clusters, namely Science and Technology, Social Sciences, and Medical and Health Sciences. The research methods are document review and focus group discussions. Through focus group discussions, analysis is done on changes in the management and their impacts on the QMS for teaching and learning for graduate studies. Findings show that there are variations in the management of thesis examinations for all clusters. Some factors are identified at different levels of the management of thesis examination such as procedures, thesis examination process, the number of PhD candidates, the frequency of senate meetings and other external factors. These findings are useful input for corrective and preventive actions to improve the QMS for teaching and learning at graduate level, especially the procedure on thesis examination.