Increasing Service Quality at a University: A Continuous Improvement Project

This paper evaluates a continuous improvement project (CIP) at a Mexican university designed to increase engineering graduate student loyalty. A plan-do-check-act problem-solving methodology was implemented, and a SERVQUAL survey was conducted on 67 master’s engineering students. Five factors were found to affect student loyalty: facility cleanliness, faculty teaching skills, evening student services, master’s degree student management roles at work and master’s degree students’ ages. After the implementation of the improvement and control actions, there was a 7.7% increase in the engineering master’s degree students’ loyalty scores. This research work took a different approach in assessing student satisfaction and student loyalty in a higher education institution (HEI) by using the SERVQUAL survey as the data collection instrument for the conduct of the CIP. However, there were several research limitations: data availability (such as student loyalty, student satisfaction and a small master’s degree student population size) and factors outside the CIP’s scope (such as the country’s economic situation, university rankings, master’s programme accreditations and COVID-19). Practical implications—The findings from this research study could be used by other HEIs to improve student loyalty and as a reference when conducting similar studies in other service organisations such as hospitals and hotels.N/