Quality Issues in Higher Education: A Multicriteria Framework of Satisfaction Measures

Abstract

Higher education attributes significant interest to student satisfaction because of its potential impact on the quality dimensions of the offered services. This is illustrated from the large number of studies that have shown a moderate to strong relationship between these two concepts. This paper provides a detailed analysis of a student satisfaction survey conducted at the Health Care Management Department of the Technological Education Institute of Athens. The analysis was based on a multi-criteria preference disaggregation method (MUSA). Results are focused on the evaluation of student choices, while significant findings of the applied methodology constitute the determination of strong and weak points of the educational component's preferences that form important suggestions for the improvement of the satisfaction level and the quality characteristics of the correspondent services.

The influence of educational e-services, advising support, available information, and knowledge acquired on customer satisfaction:The Egyptian private higher education

“…Based on the literature review that proves that private universities have a better potential to satisfy students (El Gamal and Abd El Aziz, 2011b); especially in countries with very high population such as Egypt (Abd El Aziz, 2009), and due to the variety of findings regarding the main criteria that affect student satisfaction in different contexts (Butt and Rehman, 2010) (Huang et al, 2011) (Dimas et al, 2011) (Gruber et al, 2010) (Khodayari andKhodayari, 2011)(Oscar et al, 2005) (Archambault, 2008) (Kelso, 2008) (Hanover, 2010)it was worth testing whether students are satisfied with the current educational services provided at private universities in Egypt . Accordingly, a number of hypotheses have been devised and the research framework as shown in figure 1 was developed.…”

“…The questionnaire included two tested factors scattered among 5Likert scale questions, with the following coding 1 for 'totally agree', 2 for 'agree', 3 for 'neutral', 4 for 'disagree', and 5 for 'totally disagree'. Questionnaire questions were adopted and adapted from literature review (Butt and Rehman, 2010) (Huang et al, 2011) (Dimas et al, 2011) (Gruber et al, 2010).…”

“…education indicate that dissatisfied and satisfied students are significantly different when assessed in terms of education quality, social life, compensation, studying condition, and recognition (Huang et al, 2011). While another study conducted in Greece stated that image of the department is the most important criterion leaving Academic Service, Program study, Academic staff and Equipment as of low importance to students in HE (Dimas et al, 2011). In Germany, the results of a study show that students' satisfaction with their university is based on a stable person-environment relationship (Gruber et al, 2010).…”

Assessing Criteria that Matter to Students' Satisfaction in Private Higher Education

“…A study in USA found that faculty, academic staff, and classes are the main criteria that affect students' satisfaction [11]. Another study also conducted in USA revealed that there are significant relationships between service performance and student satisfaction that will aid institutions to predict and measure student satisfaction and retention [12].In Pakistan, a study revealed that teachers' expertise, courses offered, learning environment and classroom facilities are the main criteria that affect the student satisfaction with the quality of education offered by different private and public sector universities [13]. A study conducted in Athens, Greece identified five different criteria as the criteria for students' satisfaction; namely program study, academic staff, equipment, administrative services, and image [14].…”

Quality parameterization of educational resources from the perspective of a teacher

“…Numerous scientific analyses and studies deal with methods and sequences which can find these differences, express them or specify them exactly. However, this type of research is focused on chosen groups of products, activities or services with the same or similar characteristics (eg, Bigne, Moliner & Sanchez, ; Dimas, Goula & Pierrakos, ; Ehlers & Hilera, ; Sallis, ; Shrikanthan & Dalrymple, ).…”