Abstract

With an ever growing assortment of educational options, students seek institutions that will provide for them a unique educational experience that they will remember for a life time. Since institutional budgets are developed based upon projected enrolments, it is becoming crucial for private institutions to retain the students they recruit. This situation has created a need for continued research in the area of student satisfaction and student retention. A reduction in student numbers, therefore, leads to a reduction in budgeted funds available to operate, maintain, and grow a private institution. This study seeks to determine the effect of service quality on student satisfaction in tertiary institution using the Higher Institute of Professional Studies (HIPs) case study. Specifically, the study seeks to assess how reliability, assurance, tangibility, responsiveness and empathy affect students’ satisfaction on quality service. In order to achieved these study objectives, the study employed Descriptive Survey Design using a structured questionnaire to sample 100 undergraduate students from HIPs university using convenience sampling techniques. Data was analysed using SPSS. 21.0, descriptive statistics, correlational and regression test were used to test the relationship that existed between variables. Findings revealed that Tangibility, reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness have a positive and significant correlation with students’ satisfaction. The study recommends that the university rewards those satisfied customers who engage in attracting new customers through word-of-mouth. The study also recommends that the university to also reward the students who come back for their further studies after completing one stage. It helps in ensuring that students remain loyal; thus, increased customer retention. It was suggested that similar studies should be carried out include other Higher Institution in the country.

Keywords: Students satisfaction, Service quality, Private university.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

In today’s competitive academic environment where students have many options available to them, factors that enable educational institutions to attract and retain students should be seriously studied. Higher education institutions that want to gain competitive edge in the future may need to start looking for innovative and inventive ways to attract, retain and cultivate stronger student relationships. As a private organisation, it has to depend on the interaction and mechanism of the market. As a result, there may be more and more intense competition to support as many students as possible or so-called “potential customers.

In order to succeed in today’s competitive higher education sector, service quality is of essence to any institution of higher learning (Sandhu and Bala, 2011). In view of this, higher education institutions must assess the quality of their services since outstanding service quality can provide them with competitive advantage (Albretch, 1991). If the higher education institutions provide quality service which meet or exceed that expectations of their students, their services will be evaluated as high quality service and if not, the services will be judged as poor (Zammito et al, 1996).

Customer satisfaction largely depends on the quality of services provided by any organisation (Zhou, 2011). Fundamentally, concerns on service quality have increasingly become common due to the fact that most consumers (customers) continue to be well informed on their sovereignty and right to receive better and quality services. This is widely enhanced due to availability of information on products and services quality.

Irrespective of the sector in question, globally the consumers expect to be served well and have their concerns and needs satisfied to their expectations (Daniel, 2012). This has been seen both in the developed and developing countries, in almost all sectors including the education sector which is seen as the vehicle behind economic and social development. In a broader perspective, education institutions play a very significant role in developing and training management experts for different industries by integrating their programs and benchmarking with best institutions in the world to enable students become suitable in various industries (Zeithemal, 2014).

In Cameroon, private institutions in higher learning have come up to help bridge the gap between the students’ needs and the capacities of public institutions. However, quality service by universities can be said to be one of the issues which affects satisfaction in the industry and therefore worthy an exploration in this study.

Universities are important vehicles in promoting educational goals in many countries all over the world. They supplement service delivery especially where the public universities would not have managed to cater for the academic needs due to overwhelming numbers of students seeking higher education services (Uden, 2013). Alternatively, these institutions are seen as forms of investments, in which case the owners of such institutions benefit economically, as well as create more job opportunities not only to the faculty members, but also to many other professions such as accountants, human resource managers, administrators, planners, medical practitioners, and many other people who are employed in the support staff to help promote service delivery in such institutions.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Most developing countries are facing challenges in keeping to the required high standards of education (Hasan et al., 2011). The subject of service quality has in the recent past sparked lots of concerns from different quarters in the bid of trying to foster an appropriate system that can align Cameroonian youths and learners to the global demands in the professional environments, which are entirely dependent on academic achievements (Rodrigues, 2013). Nevertheless, it is more complex to conceptualize the quality of service as opposed to that of goods

Given the fact that education is purely a service provided to the publics; its measurement can only be measured against some indicators that are different from those used in goods.

Some of the approaches include the use of SERVQUAL model, which expounds on the five service dimensions (Jayanth, 2015). Ideally, the dimensions can be measured based on the perceptions of the customers who receive the service, and in this case the students (Raphael, 2014).

In Cameroon there have been an increase in the number of private educational institution offering teaching and learning services to students and HIPs is not an exception. This increase in number of private university education only means there is high competition among institutions in the desire to attract students. Most of these private institutions spend huge among of money on commercial advertisement such as publicity, use of radio, sign board etc.  However, with the outbreak of the recent Anglophone crisis, there have been reduction in these commercial advertisement from private universities thus leading to a drop in services offer by these institutions.

The first aim of this study therefore was to identify how the students’ perceptions are affected by the nature and quality of services offered in private universities in Cameroon, taking into consideration the challenges faced by private universities in the country such as lack of funding among others. It is against this background that this study seeks to find out the impact of service quality in student satisfaction on the context of private universities in the Cameroon higher education sector.

1.3 Research Questions

1.3.1 Main Research Question

What is the effects of service quality on customer satisfaction in HIPs?

1.3.2 Specific Research Questions

Considering the service quality dimension developed by Parasuraman et al (1985) the following research question is broken down in to the following specific research questions;

1. How, does tangibility affect students’ satisfaction on quality service?
2. How, reliability affect students’ satisfaction on quality service?
3. How, responsiveness does affects students’ satisfaction on quality service?
4. How, assurance impacts students’ satisfaction on quality service?
5. How, does empathy affect students’ satisfaction on quality service?

1.4 Objective of the Study

1.4.1 Main Objective

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of service quality on student satisfaction in tertiary institution using the Higher Institute of Professional Studies (HIPs) case study.

1.4.2 Specific Objectives

1. To assess how assurance affect students’ satisfaction on quality service.
2. To establish how responsiveness, affect students’ satisfaction on quality service.
3. To determine how reliability affects students’ satisfaction on quality service.
4. To establish how tangibility impacts students’ satisfaction on quality service.
5. To determine how empathy affect students ‘satisfaction on quality service.