Journal of Management and Research (Dec 2018)
The Role of Student Expectation and Service Quality in Higher Education Institutions of Pakistan
Abstract
A sharp increase in tuition fee and the demand for efficient university graduates for employment from the employers’ perspective has given rise to an increase in students’ expectations. In private sector, students of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have greater expectations as they pay more money but the private sector HEIs do not have the required capabilities to meet such expectations. There are a lot of students who feel that the courses they are studying have no significant value against the money which they are paying to study these courses. The management of HEIs allocates more funds for research activities, updating libraries, innovative teaching methodologies, science laboratories and academic career services. Various studies showed how to gauge service quality in the specific area of higher education. The current study focuses specifically on first year/semester students of all academic disciplines of private sector HEIs. It is based on a questionnaire, and 162 responses were collected; data collection tool, that is, the questionnaire was administered personally by the researcher. By using Exploratory Factor Analysis, those dimensions of service quality were elaborated which had a considerable impact on students’ expectations and also the factors that influence students’ choice or priority to get enrolled in private sector universities. Reliability analysis of the 5 dimensions of service quality including reliability, tangibility, responsiveness, assurance and empathy depicted the value of Cronbach’s alpha to 0.980. Factor Analysis of the five dimensions of service quality was also done .Loadings after Varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization (KMO) by considering the values of loadings suppressed to 0.50 shows that 43 out of 48 items converged into 7 factors, while 5 items did not converge. The non-convergent items recommend the management of HEIs to focus on such areas of students’ expectations.
