Measuring the Impact of University Presence on Socio Economic Development towards Community Income in Kelantan, Malaysia

Abstract

Traditionally, university roles were only focused on three core areas namely teaching, research and service before they were redefined as discovery, learning, and engagement. In Malaysia, the community highly perceives university as a place for pursuing study in various fields. Nowadays, the university does not only produce graduates to fill the demand of the industry but also helps alleviate the social-economic status of the community around the university.  However, most of the researchers who deal with the issues of community development, community work and social empowerment rarely analyzed them in relation to the role of universities. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of the university’s existence towards the community’s socio-economic development.  A total of 50 individuals participated in this study who were randomly selected within 5km radius from Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Kelantan, Malaysia. Using the OLS regression model, the impact of university’s existence to the community income by looking specifically at socio economic development was identified. The results revealed that the level of agreement on the impact factors in relation to public facility, business development, job opportunity and social issues significantly influenced community income. The findings from this study can be recommended to the local authority as to act in improving public transportation, local development, business opportunity and education which showed no significant impact on the presence of the university as identified from the findings.