Students’ perspectives on service quality in higher education for attaining global excellence in Thailand

At present, higher education institutions (HEIS) need to adopt strategic actions designed to improve quality systems and gain a sustainable competitive advantage. One way in which a university can differentiate its service offering from the competitors is through the provision of excellent service quality. While the benefits of service quality have long been accepted, there are still many schools that ignore its importance. This research investigates the students’ extent of satisfaction in terms of service quality provided by three leading public universities in Thailand. The paper focuses in understanding the concept of academic service quality in the context of attaining global excellence. The results showed that the students were very satisfied with the services provided to them in terms of reliability, tangibility, assurance, empathy and responsiveness. In addition, the data disclosed that adopting service quality contributed to the attainment of the schools’ thrust in achieving global excellence. The information that were collected through the use of the questionnaire served the as primary source of information. Unstructured interviews were conducted to substantiate the primary data gathered. Service quality in this study was evaluated based on an integrated experience that happens in a network of learning sphere created to promote quality education among the students