Measuring the dimensions of quality in higher education

A contingency view on the impact of supplier development on design and conformance quality performance

“…Meirovich (2006) takes a market perspective to design quality and defines it as a fit between customer expectations and products design. In a similar vein, Widrick, Mergen and Grant (2002) argue that a deep understanding of customer requirements, translation of these requirements into a product and continuous improvement of the design process are the essential elements of design quality. Engineering design quality and industrial design quality are the two main categories of design quality (Dixon and Duffy 1990).…”

New Tools for Measuring Global Academic Performance

“…Previously, quality improvement practices were used by several higher education institutions as a yardstick (Widrick, Mergen, & Grant, 2002). There were some mixed opinions about performance measurement where some scholars said performance evaluation must consider student's related academic achievement only, meanwhile some scholars said it is important to measure student's-related academic achievement and nonstudents-related academic achievement (Ball & Wilkinson, 1994;Higgins, 1989;Johnes & Taylor, 1990).…”

Service quality ideals in a competitive tertiary environment

“…As such, the customer plays an integral part in the transaction of most services. Also, each customer's expectation of service quality is different and this has led to a lack of standardization as service quality may vary from situation to situation (Boulding, Kalra, Staelin, & Zeithaml, 1993;Widrick, Mergen, & Grant, 2002). Given the transient quality of 'service', it would be important to rely on the SQA dimensions of leadership, planning and people to achieve sustainability and consistency in the overall service quality.…”

“…Drawing on the wider literature (e.g. Ford, Joseph, & Joseph, 1999;Owlia & Aspinwall, 1998;Widrick et al, 2002), I argue that interpretation of service quality can sometimes be influenced by an individual's prior knowledge and experience; the more familiar people are of a particular service, the more unpredictable their expectations will be. Linking this premise to higher education, I suggest that students' expectations should be evaluated progressively within an acceptable timeframe, for instance, from enrolment to graduation so as to allow interpretation to maneuver within reasonable boundaries (Hill, 1995;Srikanthan & Dalrymple, 2002).…”