Qualitative Assessment of the Perceptions of Undergraduate Students and Advisors on Academic Guidance in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper describes the perceptions of undergraduate students and their advisors on the role and challenges of academic guidance in Saudi Arabia. For this, five focus groups comprising six to eight students and one advisor were interviewed, and their responses to four questions were qualitatively analyzed. The responses from all groups emerged in four major themes, two related to the student’s perspectives and two related to those of the advisors. Overall, the students identified the unfamiliarity with the purpose of academic guidance and a failure of their advisors to follow their progress as the primary challenges. The advisors highlighted the lack of student feedback and academic guidance training as the obstacles to successful student progress. The findings presented here suggest that universities should incorporate student and advisor feedback into the academic guidance systems to ensure student success.