Research On Higher Education Service Quality And Student Satisfaction

To compete effectively in the marketplace,Cambodian educational institutions need to distinguish themselves from their competitors.Providing' services that are perceived by the customers as of outstanding quality is highly likely to give an organization a competitive advantage.To acquire and maintain this advantage,universities must first determine where they stand in the eyes of the students.Facing escalating tuition costs,students are increasingly selective about what they are receiving for the fees they pay to universities.In order to survive the rivalry within higher education,universities need to provide better services to their students;hence,the need for more measurement of the quality of their services.This study is a descriptive research that based on survey-based methods,which analyses students' perceptions of university service quality and their overall satisfaction.Descriptive research is one of the most commonly used methods in social sciences,used to gather data from a sample of a population at a particular time.The questionnaire design was based on the SERVQUAL model for measuring the perceptions of service quality and student satisfaction in Cambodian public and private universities.This study also examined whether demographics information influence students' perceptions of services provided by universities and analyzed the relationship of service quality and student satisfaction.This study used the SERVQUAL instrument by Parasuraman,Zeithaml and Berry in 1988 which was updated to SERVPERF in 1992 by Cronin and Taylor to assess the quality of service perceptions.It has five dimensions(tangibles,reliability,responsiveness,assurance and empathy).The 688 usable samples of total 780 samples were taken from first,second,third and fourth year bachelor degree students from five universities in the capital of Cambodia called Phnom Penh.Those universities were Royal University of Phnom Penh(RUPP),Royal University of Law and Economics(RULE),National University of Management(NUM),Pannasatra University of Cambodia(PUC)and Build Bright University(BBU).The first three universities were public universities,and the last two were private universities.Those five universities were all famous in Cambodia and they had similar curriculum and instruction which could be represented as the Cambodian higher education institutions.The study questionnaire consists of five parts;in the first part,seven demographic characteristics of the undergraduate students,such as name of university,gender,university category,major,academic year,birth of place,and student sponsorship.In the second part,the SERVPERF questionnaire is used to assess undergraduate students' perceptions of service quality which included 22 items representing the five service quality dimensions:tangibles(4 items),reliability(5 items),responsiveness(4 items),assurance(4 items)and empathy(5 items),and the researcher had added another dimension:curriculum and instruction(11 items).The third part of the questionnaire is the overall evaluation questions seeking student satisfaction towards university service quality.The fourth part is asking students about the university image to get the reasons why they choose university to study.The fifth part is the writing part that gives a chance to students to express free ideas relating to what makes them satisfied and dissatisfied,then they give the valuable strategies to improve the service quality in Cambodian higher education.This study has six chapters.Chapter 1 starts with introduction,background,problem statement of service quality in a higher education.This chapter also explains the research purpose&significance,keyword definitions,difficulties,innovation,and the research framework.Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive review of the background literature for this study,including,the relationship between higher education service quality and students' satisfaction,the previous researches in China and other countries.Chapter 3 illustrates the theory,the characteristics and the dimensions of service quality and students' satisfaction in higher education.This chapter also describes the perceived service quality model,the importance of service quality,the theory of higher education service quality,the total quality management in higher education,the stakeholder theory,and so on.Chapter 4 discusses the questionnaire designing,research instrument,research methods,pilot testing,sample selecting,questionnaire distribution&returning,the reliability&validity of the instruments selected,and methods of data analysis.This chapter also explains the SERVQUAL model,the validity&reliability of SERVQUAL,criticism of SERVQUAL,responses to criticisms of SERVQUAL,the application of SERVQUAL,the SERVPERF model,the SERVQUAL versus SERVPERF.Chapter 5 presents respondents' profiles,data results description and the explanation the research findings to research hypothesis.Chapter 6 contains a summary of research findings,significant innovation,limitation&future research,implications,recommendations and conclusions.First,analysis of data revealed that university students more satisfied in service quality provided by private universities than public ones.The ranking five universities by mean scores of students' perceived service quality as following:(1)PUC,(2)BBU(3)NUM,(4)RUPP,and(5)RULE.It means PUC received the highest mean scores,and RULE got the least mean scores.Second,the results illustrated that among the six dimensions of service quality,assurance got the highest mean scores,but tangibles and empathy dimensions had the least mean scores.It means that Cambodian university students more satisfied in assurance dimension,and they dissatisfied with tangibles and empathy dimensions of service quality provided by universities.Third,research found that male students were just more a little satisfied with the university service quality than the female ones,so there was no significant difference between them.Fourth,there was significant relationship between academic year variable and students' perceived service quality,year 1 and 2 students were the most satisfied groups,but year 3 and 4 students were the least satisfied groups towards service quality.Fifth,there was no remarkable difference between various major students'evaluation on university service quality.Sixth,the research results also showed that there was no significant difference between students from Phnom Penh capital and provinces;it means students' place of born demographic variable did not affect the level of perceived service quality.Seventh,the research found that scholarship students were more satisfied with the service quality provided by universities than the self-funded ones.Eighth,there was a correlation between students' perceptions of service quality and student satisfaction.Ninth,there was relationship of tangibles,reliability,empathy and curriculum&instruction dimensions of service quality with the student satisfaction,it means the more these four dimension levels are high;the student satisfaction level is high.Tenth,the Cambodian university students mostly chose the university because of the university reputation(27.03%),employment rate(14.41%),the tuition fee(13.12%)and location(12.22%).Their least favorite reasons of choosing university were the university advertising(1.80%),other factors(3.21%),and university scholarship(3.49%).The study recommends that Cambodian higher education institutions should focus more on tangible and empathy dimensions of service quality as in the result revealed the lowest mean scores.To upgrade these dimensions,firstly,the rectors of each university should make sure that the university has enough modern facilities and equipment,beautiful campus environment,good parking lot,hygiene canteen,etc.Moreover,the university library should have enough books,research documents,and good Internet.Secondly,the university personnel should pay more attention on the students' needs,care all students without bias and provide more time for students to consult their learning problems.Thirdly,Cambodian government and ministry of education should improve the universities' service quality,especially the public universities by providing more funds,good governance,service quality culture,quality management system,new updated curriculum and effective human resource development.Last but not least,the future researchers should investigate more on the strategies to improve the Cambodian higher education quality.