Evaluating educational service quality in technical and vocational colleges using

SERVQUAL model

Ehsan Akhlaghi, Shahnaz Amini and Hossein Akhlaghi (2012) conducted a study
about the students’ perspective regarding the quality of educational service in technical and
vocational colleges through the SERVQUAL model. Getting modern clients and holding
current clients have continuously been considered as two fundamental approaches in
service organizations. Quality of service has been considered within the discipline of
commerce administration for a long time; since the market is progressively competitive
and showcasing administration has exchanged its center from internal execution (such
as production) to external interface like client fulfillment and customers' discernments of
service quality. Unlike an item which has particular details such as weight,
measurement, color, substance etc. a service can have numerous subtle or subjective
specifications. In this way, measuring the quality of a service can be a really troublesome
work. Besides, the desire of the client from the service can change noticeably based on
a range of components like prior encounter, personal needs and the other customer’s
expectations and discernments of a client.

A few experimental studies have utilized SERVQUAL model to demonstrate service

quality in educational institutions like universities. Most of those studies regard students
as clients of service in education (Rigotti & Pitt, 1992; Ford et al., 1993; McElwee &
Redman, 1993; Foroughi Abari et al., 2011; etc.). Service quality will eventually influence
funding and practicality in the university division by diminishing the popularity of the
institution and hence the number and standard of candidates, but the impact is indirect
and relatively slow( Kitchroen (2004) cited Zammuto et al. (1996). The conducted
research appear service gaps in numerous dimensions of service quality in their case
studies. In fact, service quality, as seen by customers, stems from a comparison of what
they feel service providers ought to offer with their recognitions of the performance of
service given by service providers (Parasuraman et al., 1985).

The participants were students in Ahvaz Techinical and Vocational College of Girls in Iran.
Out of 350 students, 328 of them have been selected to participate in the survey using the
random sampling method. A 25-item SERVQUAL questionnaire was used in order to acquire
the needed data regarding the students’ perceptions, expectations, and relevance of weights
of various service elements. The Cronboch-Coeffecient Alpha was utilized to test the
construct reliability and responses were on a 7-point Likert scale from “strongly disagree”
to “strongly agree”