During a recent wedding ceremony, a relatively senior acquaintance almost shouted at me, "Why do you do a PhD when you have steady work at Mubadala Energy?". Shocked, I smiled and sheepishly replied, "It is my dream to hold a doctoral degree". Afterwards, we sat on a nearby bench while chewing banana fritters and chatted further. The conversation with him on my doctoral journey was like in the following paragraphs.
I elected to further my studies since I dreamed of holding a doctoral degree in an American degree programme in Shah Alam during my first and sophomore years. Like many professors teaching engineering subjects, having a "Dr." as a prefix to my name could be fantastic. Later, I realised that most universities require teaching personnel to attain a doctoral degree as a minimum requirement. Also, a doctoral degree is the highest possible level in a formal education system, and I felt that I should roll along and tick the box.
My Doctor of Business Administration degree is from the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Shah Alam. One reason for choosing this university was a location not far from my residence since I expected to travel to the campus for classes and administrative reasons. Secondly, while working in Repsol, my colleague, who had registered as a doctoral student earlier, provided a good run-through of what UiTM had to offer; he generally painted favourable colours of its doctoral programme. Finally, the fee by UiTM was among the most competitive compared to other universities offering similar programmes like Open University Malaysia, Universiti Malaya or Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
The processes to complete my doctoral study are briefly described as follows. The first was to complete the courses in three semesters. While attending the classes, a research topic was determined since this led to the research focus. Next was presenting the research proposal before a committee. Then, data collection was undertaken, and the analysis was completed. An oral examination before another committee was required to evaluate the passing level. After the examination, the dissertation was corrected and formatted per UiTM thesis requirements. The dissertation's acceptance marked the study's completion, followed by a letter from the University Institute of Post-Graduate Studies. A graduation ceremony should follow suit after that.
My research topic was financial literacy among self-employed people, which a lecturer in the first semester suggested. My initial interest was in a sovereign fund and how a set- up in Malaysia can be compared to Norway, which operates a very successful petroleum- based sovereign fund. He managed to convince me that the research data for the Malaysian fund could be complex to extract since it has been within the government body and the topic itself was somewhat opaque, i.e. not many people would be familiar with the topic if the interviews were to be conducted. Later, I discovered that a financial literacy subject has been undergoing intense research worldwide, including in Malaysia. The rate of journal publications in financial literacy has steadily increased for the past 20 years.
Like any other academic research, a thesis supervisor is a must-have arrangement. I considered my thesis supervisor a great individual who helped me to completion, reflecting his dedication to nurturing my research journey. He turned around my submitted draft documents within one or two days. His agreement to change the sample population age bands during data collection reflected his experience in supervising previous doctoral students when such a change could occur and subject to sufficient justifications. He was not dictative of my writing and let me write based on my style. If there were errors, just in case, in my dissertation, these errors were purely mine. I owed him for his subtle reminder of the due dates if I wanted to achieve specific targets, and he expected me to work on my schedule accordingly. When I was tied up with my daily office work and could not spend much time on my research, he would reply that he understood the situation and wished me a better time to recover. My co-supervisor was a wife to my late friend when we were in Talisman Energy, and it could make the world feel small. As a co-supervisor, she helped provide her feedback on my writings and contributed to new ideas during the discussions. I hope my study completion will elevate them to higher career grades as I was the fifth or sixth completed doctoral student for the supervisor and the first for my co-supervisor.
In addition to my supervisor and co-supervisor, I truly enjoyed being in the company of my classmates, especially during the first three semesters while we were attending classes. Initially, the class was about 20; four of us had an engineering background. The rest were in business-related or management fields. Almost half of the classmates were ex-students of UiTM and shared their views of the faculty. My classmates were primarily working professionals in government or private organisations. One of us was running a business, and he steadfastly brought his perspective on business survival. In the beginning, one of us was a lecturer from academia, and he left to pursue a more suitable PhD degree to suit his career. I was one of two senior students in my mid-fifties, while the youngest was 30 years our junior. Occasionally, there were generational gaps in communication with these younger students, but it could make me feel young or at least behave like young. The mixture allowed me to appreciate what they learned and work for a living. Working with classmates specifically to complete group assignments reminded me of the similarities of working with other team members in an engineering project. I had to say that overall, the classmates were easy to go along with occasional laughter in between. I was also grateful that I managed to be the first to reach the finish line, and it has been my pleasure to share some tips and assist others in following through.
My doctoral journey commenced in March 2021 and was completed in July 2024, spanning over three and half years, equivalent to seven semesters, shaped by the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, I initially worked as a full-time engineer. The classes were held in the evening on the three weekdays, starting at six o'clock and going for four hours officially.
Adjustments and sacrifices were anticipated to meet the challenges like many other adventures. While the COVID-19 pandemic was prevalent in early 2021, working from home was a norm, making a switch from "office work" to online classes in the evening a breeze. However, working at the physical Kuala Lumpur office on a rotational basis in the second half of 2021 required me to stay in the office to attend the online class. I practically reached home by midnight. In the third semester, 30% of the classes were in a face-to-face mode, necessitating me to take a half-day leave to avert an evening rush hour to be at a physical class by 6 pm at Shah Alam campus. Typically, after the class, I reached home almost at midnight and sometimes could feel my bones breaking loose. One of the most significant sacrifices in completing my studies was quitting my office work at the end of my fifth semester to focus on data collection efforts and finishing my dissertation as soon as possible. I regarded my office work as decent-paying, and I was hopeful that I would get a similar pay once I searched for another office work after my studies. At that time, the data collection was not progressing to the level that I hoped for, and concurrently, the office work demanded that I spend my evenings and Sundays responding to work queries rather than on my research work and dissertation writing at my leisure. I was truly blessed that after eleven (11) months of leaving the office work, I completed my study with a letter from the faculty affirming my completion, subjecting me to submit a few remaining paperwork. I may have taken longer to complete should I have decided to stay on with my office position.
Another challenge was completing the data collection via an online questionnaire within the specified duration. At first, I projected that the process would take three months to complete by having my friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbours and social media networks fill in the survey forms. Still, I only managed to obtain half the required minimum number of respondents. Fortunately, my wife's cousin was a team leader in a survey company, and I quickly sought her assistance to mobilise a team of enumerators to gather the remaining responses, leading to the overall duration overshoot by two weeks, which was still manageable from a schedule standpoint.
When I registered as a doctoral student, I anticipated that my selected programme would require more time to attend and pass the courses and less endeavour on research. As the courses and time progressed, it became evident that the programme research was as challenging as a typical PhD programme, except with less emphasis on discussing its theoretical foundation.
The story of a doctoral journey is worth writing and sharing since each journey is unique, considering that the undertaking is likely driven more by self-motivation than expectation to complete, such as in attaining a bachelor's degree. Also, the doctorate requirements differ from one university to another, such as a full research mode vs a mixed mode consisting of coursework and research. The doctoral student's ages can vary significantly (30 years in my case), and each student has different constraints and flexibility (full-time vs part-time) to complete the study. The research topic and method also differ for each student, with each selection having its flavours or implications.
My doctoral journey has been a transformative chapter in my life, marked by growth, resilience, and the pursuit of knowledge. It made me believe there is no age limit for learning and earning a degree once a target was set and adjustments were resolved. Engineering-based students should have had easier learning in business-related fields than vice versa. I also observed there were many similarities between being a doctoral student and a professional engineer, such as working in a team (classmates vs project team members), presenting the results (research findings vs project analysis results) and preparing the final report (dissertation vs project completion report).
Moving forward, I am excited to leverage the knowledge and insights gained during my doctoral journey to contribute meaningfully to business administration or engineering. I am confident that the skills acquired and experiences will enable me to tackle new challenges and drive positive change in the organisations and communities I serve. I look forward to the opportunities ahead and remain committed to making a lasting impact through continuous learning and meaningful contributions to the organisations and business community.
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Ir. Maskan Md Hassan completed his doctoral study at Universiti Teknologi MARA in July 2024 and is waiting for a committee endorsement of its completion. He has been a Senior Mechanical Engineer with 30 years of professional experience in offshore oil and gas industries, specialising in executing various phases of facilities project developments. His career has spanned several international oil and gas companies: ExxonMobil, Talisman Energy, Repsol and Mubadala Energy. He is a registered Professional Engineer with a Practising Certificate from the Board of Engineers, Malaysia. He currently resides in Selangor, Malaysia.
LinkedIn: Ir. Maskan Md Hassan, PEPC
