Developing a Student Satisfaction Index and a Strategic Management Map for Turkish Higher Education

Abstract

This research aims to examine student satisfaction at higher education institutions through the estimation of a student satisfaction index (SSI) by simultaneously building a strategic management map (SMM) to help higher education leaders identify the areas for improvement at their institutions during Covid-19 induced hybrid education in Turkish Higher Education. The research was carried out with university students at a well-known foundation university in Turkey during Covid-19 pandemic. American Customer Satisfaction Model (ACSI) was used as a lens of analyisis to demonstrate the causal relationship between the antecedents and consequences of student satisfaction in Turkish Higher Education. The partial least squares (PLS) estimation was employed to test the model and obtain the SSI score. Given the complex nature of student satisfaction and loyalty, the model was found to adequately predict overall student satisfaction and loyalty. SSI score of 64.95 was found to be lower than the weighted average of all sectors in the United States in 2021. The SMM that was built to examine the relative importance of each quality attributes demonstrated that the perceived utility/benefit and interactional/process-based quality attributes have the greatest positive influence on satisfaction score.