Service Quality In Higher Learning Institution : The Case Of UUM

Quality is a core function of a service organization. There is an ongoing debate in higher education about the issue of "quality", but there is little agreement about how it is measured. The views of students do not seem to feature in the national debate. The purpose of this survey is to examine the students's views, as a "user" of higher education, about the attributes of quality in higher education and services, which the student are experiencing. This study is designed to apply the modified SERVQUAL found in Kwan's and Ng's (1991) and also in Parasuraman et al.'s (1988) findings with reference to the students in a different social and cultural context. The study focused on population of students currently available in Universiti Utara Malaysia's main campus in Sintok, Malaysia. 380 students who still study in UUM are selected as samples based upon a simple random sampling. Descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis are used to analyze the data. There are two main findings in this study. First, comparing to the findings by Kwan and Ng (1999) that both Hong Kong and Chinese students are very practical and only focus on study-related matters rather than social life in campus. Students in UUM are found to be most interested in campus life and the importance of Lecturers's Concern for Students has not been emphasized. UUM students are found quite satisfied with the Communication with University and the Tangible. Secondly, the results from the SERVQUAL Model evaluation suggest that determinants of service quality are different from those in other industries sampled by Parasuraman et al. (1988) where reliability is always deemed most important. The study found that the most important determinants of overall quality for students are empathy, responsiveness, assurance, tangibles and reliability in the higher learning institution context. Recommendations for further study are disscussed at the end of this study