The Best Strategy for Student’s Islamic Character Development Program in Public University

Abstract

The good character of public university students contributes to anticipating the potential for nation’s moral degradation. Islamic character education, which is believed to be closely related to controlling daily moral ethics, is taught through Islamic religious as well as personality development lectures. This study aims to analyze the educational model of forming Islamic character for students in search for the best strategy to build the students’ piety in expressing Islamic character. A total of 529 undergraduate students in the second semester of the Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Brawijaya University of Malang, Indonesia became the respondents of the study. They have had the experience in attending Islamic religious lectures and involved in religious activities. WarpPLS software is used to analyze the structural model of students’ Islamic character development (IC) which involves the roles of religious lectures (RL), non-religious lectures (NRL), and mentoring programs (MP). The results showed that the highest direct correlation path coefficient was found in MP to IC (0.413; P<0.001) compared to the others: RL to IC mediated by MP (0.347; P<0.001) and NRL to IC mediated by RL and followed by MP mediation (0.254; P<0.001). The results of the study concluded that the mentoring programs (MP) had the most influence in building the students’ Islamic character (IC).