Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of international students of service quality delivery (SQD) in a Malaysian public university. Design/methodology/approach: The study was limited to the University's immediate physical environment and its associated human and systems-based services. The physical environment in this study focused on the University buildings and all their contents, for example, the physical structures and infrastructure and related services. Qualitative methods were used and purposeful sampling was employed to select six international students from three different regions who were attending graduate level programs in a Malaysian public university to give their views on the quality of service delivery directly linked to the physical environment of the university. An understanding of students' thoughts and expectations of the quality of services offered, especially given that they were from varied social and cultural settings, is crucial to the adoption of measures for continuous improvement in today's customer driven higher educational market. Findings: The results show that the university is appreciated for its environmental friendly vegetation, numerous facilities and several policies and regulations allied to its environment but they also show gaps between the well developed policies and their corresponding implementation; the results also evoke the differences in understanding and implementation of services, requiring empathy in today's education world, between senior staff and their junior counterparts as well as interpretation of experiences of services encountered by international students. Originality/value: The findings and discussion, especially with regard to the systems and human related service responses, could serve as a base for understanding some of the thoughts of international students and could be replicated on other campuses with a view to understanding how other students feel about their physical environments and the related services as well.