Managing Political Behavior of University Students

The main objective of the institute of higher learning is to produce students who are excellence in academic, innovative and prepared to face any challenges. Besides learning various disciplines of knowledge they also participate in campus politics. This article analyses the factors which form student political behavior on the campus and strategy undertaken by management and lecturer to make students innovative and progressive. A survey using questionnaires was carried out from a sample of 800 students in the main campus of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The result of the study shows that student political behavior was influenced by their family background and campus environment. The other factors are location and campus environment, welfare, racial composition, state of origin, mass media, issues, lecturer and university leadership. The strategy undertaken by the UKM management are to give more attention on student welfare, monitoring students activities, practicing student friendly policy and concept of hands on, introducing patriotic courses, built-up close relationship between student and top leadership and student union. Thus managing political behavior of campus students would be very interesting and challenging indeed for future analyses to look again into the question of young voting pattern in Malaysia. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s3p48