Purpose: This paper aims to create a theoretical model of student involvement in the institutional quality assurance process at their universities. Design/methodology/approach: The model suggested in this paper was created and developed from a critical examination of relevant literature on stakeholder involvement in decision making and quality…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to report on the perception of students in regard to critical antecedents, dimensions and consequences of service quality with an aim to develop a theoretical model in the context of a university in Australia. Design/methodology/approach: This research used focus group discussions with 19 students who had been…

Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate academic advising in terms of student needs, expectations, and success rather than through the traditional lens of student satisfaction with the process. Design/methodology/approach: Student participants (n = 611) completed a survey exploring their expectations of and experience with academic advising.…

Purpose: This paper seeks to explore satisfactory and dissatisfactory service encounters in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: The data are collected through the well established critical incident technique (CIT) method. All the satisfied and dissatisfied critical incidents are then grouped on the basis of Bitner et al.'s…

Purpose: Keeping in mind the urgent need to deliver quality education in higher education institutes, the current paper seeks to measure the quality perception of management students in India. Design/methodology/approach: Based on an exploratory study a modified version of SERVQUAL was employed as the research instrument. Data were collected from…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a new disabled service user-specific service quality model ARCHSECRET against a modified SERVQUAL model in the context of disabled students within higher education. Design/methodology/approach: The application of SERVQUAL in the voluntary sector had raised serious issues on its portability…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to report the initial analyses of relationships between various components of the learning patterns exhibited by a group of 1,572 post-secondary students in Hong Kong as operationalized via the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), a quantitative instrument developed by Vermunt originally for the Dutch…

Purpose: This paper aims to address students' expectations of classroom pedagogy. It suggests that meeting students' specific expectations of teaching, one of the core educational processes, could impact the perception of the overall quality of the educational experience. Design/methodology/approach: A survey was administered to 372 first-year…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to outline the ways in which staff of a post-1992 UK university set about enhancing the student experience, at a time when the institution had poor student evaluations as demonstrated by the UK National Student Survey and other indicators. Using a range of interventions led by the PVC (Academic), a concerted…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the influence of the human resource (HR) manager on the quality of service in an academic college, and the human resource management (HRM) outcomes of the process. Design/methodology/approach: The paper relates to a customer satisfaction survey. More than 120 questionnaires were completed by the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to survey students on their satisfaction with university services and programs in a coeducational Lebanese Catholic higher education institution. The study attempts to relate self-assessed knowledge of the university procedures, rules and regulations on six dimensions of satisfaction, being: academic…

Purpose: This paper seeks to evaluate the arguments for and against the proposition that students in higher education are "customers" and should be treated as such. Design/methodology/approach: A critical review of the relevant literature from the domains of total quality management and marketing. Findings: The debate is polarised, with advocates…

Purpose: This paper is the second part of a comprehensive report about a research study that aims to assess the relationship between the university experience and student outcomes as a means of determining a university's success in meeting its educational goals. Design/methodology/approach: While Part I has described the process of how data were…

Purpose: To investigate the possible effects of workplace stress in academics on the student learning experience. Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaires were designed and distributed to all academic staff at a Scottish Higher Education Institute. This measured perceived levels of stress amongst academic staff and the possible impact of this…

Purpose: The applicability of total quality management (TQM) to higher education instruction is controversial. The purpose of this paper is to help clarify the application of TQM to higher education instruction by identifying and analyzing the dual roles played by both students and instructors. The authors also offer an improvement to the…