International Journal of Public Sector Management

An analysis of customer satisfaction in a higher education context

Corneliu Munteanu Ciprian Ceobanu Claudia Bobâlc# Oana Anton
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Corneliu Munteanu Ciprian Ceobanu Claudia Bobâlc# Oana Anton, (2010),"An analysis of customer
satisfaction in a higher education context", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 23 Iss 2
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Jacqueline Douglas, Robert McClelland, John Davies, (2008),"The development of a conceptual model of
student satisfaction with their experience in higher education", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 16 Iss 1
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IJPSM
23,2 An analysis of customer
satisfaction in a higher education
context
124
Corneliu Munteanu, Ciprian Ceobanu, Claudia Bobâlcă and
Oana Anton
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University at Iasi, Iasi, Romania
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Abstract
Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in student satisfaction across
different programs of the same business college, and to identify dimensions underlying overall
perceived quality. It also aims to investigate the existence of differences in perceived quality among
programs and factors determining those differences. Based on these results, it seeks to assess the
strengths and weaknesses of each program. Finally, differences in satisfaction constituents among
high performing students and low performing students are to be analysed.
Design/methodology/approach – Research was conducted in two stages. First, a focus group
method was employed in order to identify critical incident specificities for the population under study.
Then, a survey based on Likert-type items was used for data collection. Data processing involved both
univariate and multivariate analysis.
Findings – Three major findings can be pointed out. First, in comparison with similar studies
developed in western universities, the list of critical incidents contains noticeable differences.
Secondly, it was found that students with different academic performances are concerned with
different critical incidents. Thirdly, differences in overall satisfaction with educational experience were
found among different lines of specialisation.
Research limitations/implications – A major concern is related to not considering student
motivation as an important influential variable on both academic performance and overall satisfaction.
Then, a gender based analysis considering differences in satisfaction constituents could have been
conducted.
Practical implications – Service organisations, including higher education providers, increasingly
recognise that today’s customers have many alternatives to chose from, that they may more readily
change providers if they are not content, and that satisfaction largely depends on the quality of service
provided. In the case of higher education institutions, this seems to be the case at the time (when
prospective students apply to several colleges to get admitted), during the break between semesters
(when students transfer from one college to another) or at the end of the program (when they can
choose whether or not to continue their education within the same college).
Originality/value – The originality of this paper relies on the educational context in which it was
conducted, and on the internal competition perspective. Compared with studies conducted in western
universities, important differences were found. Romanian students report slightly different issues
when evaluating perceived quality and satisfaction. Issues such as campus safety are not a major
concern, while professors’ personal behaviour problems are highlighted.
Keywords Customer satisfaction, Higher education, Cluster analysis, Romania
Paper type Research paper
International Journal of Public Sector
Management Theoretical background
Vol. 23 No. 2, 2010
pp. 124-140 Customer satisfaction
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3558
In a competitive marketplace, where organisations vie for customers, client satisfaction
DOI 10.1108/09513551011022483 becomes an important differentiator of marketing strategy. Customer satisfaction
 largely depends on the degree to which a product supplied by an organisation meets or Customer
surpasses customer expectation. By measuring customer satisfaction, organisations satisfaction in
are able to get an indication of how successful they actually are in providing products
to the market. higher education
Customer satisfaction is an abstract and rather ambiguous concept. Manifestations
of satisfaction vary from one person to another and from one product to another. The
state of the so-called “satisfaction” depends on a number of psychological and physical 125
variables, and correlates with certain behaviours. Among the psychological variables,
personal beliefs, attitudes and evaluations may affect customer satisfaction (Ajzen and
Fishbein, 1980). In the context of the present paper, attitudes towards the quality of
higher education are believed to influence individual satisfaction. According to Oliver
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(1981), customer satisfaction is relatively transient and is consumption-specific,

whereas attitudes are relatively enduring. Along these lines, Westbrook and Oliver
(1981) argued that satisfaction is an evaluation of the totality of the purchase situation
relative to expectations, whereas an attitude is a liking for a product or service that
lacks the element of comparison. Therefore, it appears from this perspective that the
level of satisfaction may vary depending on the alternatives available to customers.
For the purpose of the present research, student satisfaction is defined as an
evaluative summary of direct educational experience, based on the discrepancy
between prior expectation and the performance perceived after passing through the
educational cycle. Because satisfaction is a psychological state, the efforts of
measuring it are oftentimes ridden with caveats. Yet, despite this, a large number of
satisfaction measurements have been proposed.

Quality dimensions in higher education

Nowadays, higher education is being driven towards commercial competition imposed
by economic forces resulting from the development of global education markets and
the reduction of governmental funds, forcing colleges and universities to seek other
sources of financing. Higher education institutions have to be concerned with not only
what society values in terms of the skills and abilities of their graduates (Ginsberg,
1991), but also with how their students feel about their educational experience. These
new perspectives call attention to the management processes within the institutions as
an alternative to the traditional areas of academic standards, accreditation and
performance indicators of teaching and research. There are a number of problems in
developing performance indicators in higher (or tertiary) education. One such problem
is that performance indicators tend to become measures of activity rather than true
measures of the quality of the educational service offered to students. These
performance indicators may have something to do with the provision of higher
education, but they certainly fail to measure the quality of education provided in any
comprehensive way (Berg, 2005).
Many higher education institutions perform some evaluation of the quality of
education provided to students, as well as an assessment of student satisfaction.
Student satisfaction is an increasingly important indicator of the quality of teaching
performance and can also be considered as an outcome measure of the education
process (Ramsden, 1991).
Measuring student satisfaction is not an easy task to attempt. Therefore, the
indicators that are used differ from one author to another. For example, Browne et al.
 IJPSM (1998) found that global satisfaction within a university was driven by a student’s
23,2 assessment of course quality and other curriculum-related factors associated with a
university. Borden (1995) found that student satisfaction is related to the match
between student priorities and the campus environment (Elliott and Shin, 2002).
The perceived quality of the activity within a tertiary educational institution can be
described also in terms of satisfaction with a set of general university characteristics. A
126 student satisfaction inventory developed by Noel-Levitz assesses levels of perceived
importance and satisfaction along the following 11 dimensions:
(1) Academic advising effectiveness.
(2) Campus climate.
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(3) Campus life.

(4) Campus support services.
(5) Concern for the individual.
(6) Instructional effectiveness.
(7) Recruitment and financial aid effectiveness.
(8) Registration effectiveness.
(9) Campus safety and security.
(10) Service excellence.
(11) Student centeredness (Elliott and Shin, 2002).

Other authors (Athiyaman, 1997; Wiers-Jenssen et al., 2002) agree that measuring
student satisfaction implies a set of indicators that covers the same main aspects of a
student’s life.
Despite this variety of forms, the effort of grasping the nuances of student
satisfaction can be divided into two loosely bound categories: assessing teaching and
learning; and assessing total student experience (Aldridge and Rowley, 1998).
The focus of early work lay on the first category. More recently, there has been
wider acknowledgement that the totality of student experience with the educational
institution provides a more useful perspective for dealing with student satisfaction in
marketing terms.
Attempts to define quality in higher education have resulted in a variety of labels
being attached to the concept, yet similar explanations of the concept are evident. That
is, quality in higher education is about efficiency, high standards, excellence, value for
money, fitness for purpose and/or customer focused (Watty, 2006). To a lesser extent, a
notion of quality as transformation and/or value added is also discussed in the
literature. Harvey (1994) cited by Watty (2006) considers this issue as a “meta-quality
concept” (by reference to transformation), possibly operationalised by other concepts:
excellence/high standards, perfection, fitness for purpose, and value for money.
However, while acknowledging this potential, Harvey asserts that these
operationalisations are not ends in themselves, but simply part of a notion of
quality as transformation.
In order to identify important quality dimensions, two research methods are
extensively used. The first method is the quality dimensions development approach,
and calls for the provider to identify the quality dimensions of the product or service.
 The second method is the critical incident approach, and involves customers in Customer
determining quality dimensions. satisfaction in
The critical incident method is useful for both developing customer questionnaires
and for business process analysis, in which organisations attempt to define and higher education
understand their customers’ requirements. This method focuses on getting information
from customers about the product or service they received. As is often the case,
different customers have different requirements, but at a group level there are some 127
dominant characteristics they expect to receive at a certain standard.
The strength of this method relies on the utilisation of customers, who are in the
best position to speak out about what is and what is not important with regard to a
specific product or service. Relying solely on organisations’ employees may reflect
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dimensions that are not important for clients, and could hide issues that are really
important to clients.
A critical incident is a specific example of personal experience with the product that
generated either satisfaction or dissatisfaction. A good critical incident for defining
customer requirements has two characteristics: it is specific and it describes the
provider in behavioral terms or describes the product with specific adjectives. A
critical incident is specific if it describes a single behaviour or characteristic (Hayes,
1997).
The procedure for generating critical incidents involves two steps. First, customers
are interviewed to obtain specific information about their experience with the product.
Second, information is categorised into groups, each group reflecting quality
dimensions. Customer requirements obtained from interviews should comprehensively
define the quality of the product or service. If any customer requirement is overlooked,
the resulting questionnaire and measurement would be deficient. Subsequently,
organisations might not be able to improve overall customer satisfaction because the
reasons why customers are satisfied or dissatisfied are not known.

Assessing service quality

The quality issues, as perceived by customers, have been researched extensively. One
of the pioneers was Gronroos (1978) who recognised the need and usefulness of
developing valid and distinct measures of service quality. Lewis and Booms (1983,
p. 100) were also among the first to define service quality as a “measure of how well the
service level delivered matches the customer’s expectations.” Thereafter, there seems
to be a broad consensus that service quality is an attitude of overall judgment about
service superiority, although the exact nature of this attitude is still hazy. Some
suggest that it stems from a comparison of performance perceptions with expectations
(Parasuraman et al., 1988), while others argue that it is derived from a comparison of
performance with ideal standards or from perceptions of performance alone (Cronin
and Taylor, 1992).
More recently, Shemwell et al. (1998) developed a causal model that depicted how
service quality and satisfaction levels are related. This model included such measures
as: minimisation of complaints, emotional bonding (affective commitment) and an
increased preference for continuing the relationship with the same provider.
In the services area, quality can be distinguished from satisfaction since quality is a
general attitude while satisfaction is linked with different experiences. The usual
 IJPSM measures of customer satisfaction involve a survey with a set of statements on a Likert
23,2 type scale.
Research conducted by Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988) provides a basic frame for
measuring customer satisfaction for services. They suggest that it might be the
perception of service quality that leads to customer satisfaction and, thereby, these
authors use the gap between customer expectation of provider performance and the
128 actual perceived experience of that performance. This means that, if a customer
perceives the service to be of high quality, then the customer will be satisfied. The
SERVQUAL model defined service quality using five dimensions: tangibles, reliability,
responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. However, some other authors (Bitner, 1990;
Bolton and Drew, 1991a, b) see this relationship in a different way and suggest that, if
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customers are satisfied with the service that is offered to them, they will perceive it to
be of high quality. In other words, satisfaction is an antecedent of service quality.
The proponents of the alternative model of service quality, used in the development
of SERVPERF (Cronin and Taylor, 1992) argue that the difference gap formulation is
fundamentally flawed and that quality should be defined simply in terms of perception,
without giving great importance to expectations. Later work carried out by Cronin and
Taylor proposes the “confirmation/disconfirmation theory,” in which the “satisfaction
gap” (between expectation and perception of performance) is transformed into a single
measurement of performance according to expectation.
In 2004, Firdaus proposed HEdPERF (Higher Education PERFormance-only), a new
and more comprehensive performance-based measuring scale that attempts to capture
the authentic determinants of service quality within the higher education sector. The
41-item instrument has been empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability and
validity using both types of factorial analysis, exploratory and confirmatory.
Therefore, the primary question is directed at the measurement of the service quality
construct within a single, empirical study utilising customers of a single industry,
namely higher education (Firdaus, 2006).
Therefore, managers and academics in the higher education sector need to identify
and measure the link between performance of the specific service quality dimensions
and customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer will recommend that service to other
prospects and will have a tendency to continue the relationship with the education
service provider.

Methodology
The overall purpose of this exploratory research is to develop a comparative analysis
for students’ perceptions regarding each educational program offered by a College of
Economics and Business Administration (hereafter referred to as CEBA) from
Romania, an East European country. Results will allow identification of the main
weaknesses and strengths for each program, and will suggest strategy adaptations.
This study is focused on four objectives:
(1) Identifying the differences in satisfaction between students in different
specialisations.
(2) Identifying major factors that contribute to student satisfaction with their
experience in college semesters.
 (3) Investigating statistical relationships between the overall service quality of Customer
each specialisation, as perceived both by students with major in each program, satisfaction in
and students with a major in other programs.
(4) Investigating differences in perceived satisfaction between high ranked
higher education
students and low ranked students in terms of educational performance.

During the first stage of the process three focus groups were developed in order to 129
identify issues that are important from students’ standpoints. Critical incidents
identified in this stage were analysed and a questionnaire was developed. The
questionnaire consists of 71 items and takes some 15 minutes to complete. Of the
71 questions, 58 are Likert-type items intended to measure satisfaction, two items are
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intended to evaluate overall perceived quality, two items are intended to measure most
successful and most undesirable courses within each specialisation, eight are
identification items, and one item is intended to capture students’ suggestions for
educational quality improvement.
In order to evaluate satisfaction levels for several education programs, a survey was
conducted. The final sample composition by specialisation is made up of students
majoring in accounting (acct) (n ¼ 46), economics (ec) (n ¼ 5), finance-banking (finbk)
(n ¼ 91), business information systems (bis) (n ¼ 21), marketing (mkt) (n ¼ 45),
management (mgt) (n ¼ 32), international business (int) (n ¼ 10), business statistics
(stat) (n ¼ 11), and commerce-tourism-services (cts) (n ¼ 78). Owing to the low
weighting of two specialisations within CEBA – Economics and Business Statistics –,
the respective subjects were eliminated from statistical analysis. However, even
though business information systems and international business have poor
representation within the sample, with less than 30 participants in each case, these
subgroups were kept in the statistical analysis, due to high shares these specialisations
have within CEBA student population.
Respondents were approached minutes after defending their dissertation/thesis.
This moment was chosen in order to minimise distorted responses due to concerns
about possible negative consequences. However, some distortions due to the highly
aroused emotional state might have occurred.
Responses were processed using both univariate and multivariate statistical
procedures.

Results
One of the first objectives is identifying differences in experience satisfaction and
overall perceived quality for seven important specialisations at CEBA. Satisfaction is
evaluated through average scores for each of the 58 Likert items. A preliminary
factorial analysis underscored that five items proved not to be important for
differentiating among specialisations and they were dropped from further analysis.
Results are presented in Tables I-XII.
A second objective is grouping items into major satisfaction dimensions. In the first
stage, the criterion used for item grouping was correlation between items provided by a
cluster analysis procedure. This statistical procedure revealed the existence of eight
important dimensions, which group 48 items (three items are statistically linked to
these groups). Then, in a second stage, qualitative analysis revealed that five more
items can be assigned to different previous groups.
 IJPSM
Average scores
23,2 Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

Specialisation program provided extended

economic knowledge 3.85 3.88 * 3.57 3.93 3.56 3.50 3.45 * *
Specialisation program shaped the professional
130 skills I need 3.33 * * 3.35 * * 3.90 4.00 * 3.53 3.20 3.22 * *
Specialisation program shaped a good
professional attitude on me 3.52 * * 3.65 * * 3.71 4.22 * 3.50 * * 3.40 3.41 * *
In specialisation I graduate there is a large
demand for qualified employees 4.26 * 3.74 * * 4.33 * 4.19 * 3.53 * * 3.80 3.71 * *
Table I. The specialisation I graduate has a wide
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Average scores for spectrum of jobs I can work in 3.96 3.91 * * 4.29 4.49 * 3.78 * * 3.80 3.99 * *
“long-term professional
horizon” dimension Note: See text for explanation of asterisks

Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

More students should have access to scholarship

programs in other countries 4.28 4.22 3.90 4.09 4.56 4.10 4.12
The ranking system for scholarships competition in
foreign universities is not transparent enough 3.98 3.83 3.32 * 3.77 4.19 * * 3.30 3.76
I wished college would motivate me to participate in
international student conferences 3.89 3.81 3.86 4.12 4.31 4.22 3.90
I wished college have organised conferences with
high level professional 4.13 4.11 4.48 4.36 4.34 4.20 4.19
Table II. Our college should teach courses with foreign
Average scores for professors 4.37 3.98 3.76 4.16 3.97 4.20 4.04
“supplemental education” Internship programs are not well planned and
dimension managed 4.13 * * 3.77 3.52 3.62 3.94 2.90 * 3.78

Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

Theory taught in courses is not related with business

reality 3.54 * * 3.21 2.90 2.66 * 3.28 3.10 3.46 * *
Table III. Some of the courses are not updated 3.89 3.86 3.05 3.49 3.65 3.50 3.59
Average scores for For some courses there is no relationship between
“course content” theory and seminar activities 3.17 3.56 3.24 3.24 3.10 3.10 3.30
dimension Professors are taking care of course quality 3.28 3.61 3.90 3.56 3.38 3.40 3.50

The final clustering result grouped 53 out of the 58 Likert type items into nine main
dimensions:
(1) Long-term professional horizon, which groups items that refer to the education
students receive (knowledge, skills, attitude) and job conditions forecast
(demand for qualified graduates, diversity of jobs they are qualified).
 Customer
Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts
satisfaction in
higher education
Professors are opened for communicating
with students 3.28 * * 3.51 * * 4.48 * 3.60 * * 3.56 * * 3.60 3.35 * *
Professors motivate students to present their
opinions 3.36 3.55 3.81 3.58 3.78 3.30 3.39 131
Some of the professors care more about
students’ physical presence than for student Table IV.
involvement 3.50 3.08 3.14 3.26 3.67 3.40 3.39 Average scores for
Students’ evaluations are done quite “communication gates”
objectively 3.27 3.08 3.76 3.19 3.53 3.10 3.24 dimension
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Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

Some of the projects have not been announced

with a sufficient time lead 2.43 2.51 2.67 2.30 * 2.97 3.60 * * 2.62
Some professors do not meet deadlines for
examination results’ posting 3.41 3.42 3.05 * 3.84 3.63 3.60 3.92 * *
Some professors do not give feedback for
projects and examinations 3.47 3.31 * 2.67 * 3.93 * * 3.35 3.60 3.43
For some courses text support was not made
available by professors 2.87 2.60 2.43 2.93 2.84 2.78 3.04
Some professors do not communicate
evaluation system at the beginning of
semester 2.65 2.36 * 2.38 2.75 2.90 2.70 2.95 * * Table V.
Some professors use to miss class hours 2.27 2.83 2.38 2.42 2.61 3.40 2.53 Average scores for
Because of very short exam sessions we “timing and feedback”
cannot prepare for examinations 4.53 * * 3.93 3.38 * 3.73 * 3.55 * 3.78 3.61 * dimension

Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

Some professors have exaggeratedly high demands

for students 3.78 3.72 3.52 3.68 3.47 3.30 3.81
Some professors are exaggeratedly tough in student
evaluations 3.69 3.43 3.14 3.53 3.28 2.70 3.53
Some professors place useless workload projects on Table VI.
students 4.09 * * 3.80 3.19 * 3.75 3.81 4.00 4.03 * * Average scores for
Time schedule for the 8th semester is excessively “educational pressure”
loaded 4.48 4.14 4.00 4.38 3.97 3.60 4.26 dimension

(2) Supplemental education, composed of items referring to additional education

provided by external trainers (foreign professors, industry professionals) and
extra-curricular projects (participation in student conferences, scholarship
programs in western universities, internships).
 IJPSM
Average scores
23,2 Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

Professors do not take into consideration

students’ opinion 3.59 3.32 2.90 3.56 3.41 3.70 3.56
Professors do not allow questions for the
132 courses content they teach 3.16 2.97 2.76 3.25 2.77 3.80 3.23
Some professors have misogynist remarks 3.44 * * 3.66 * * 2.33 * 3.81 * * 2.90 3.30 3.25 * *
Sometimes professors make gross (vulgar)
jokes 2.52 3.13 * * 2.00 * 2.98 * * 2.41 2.90 2.93 * *
Some professors defend their standpoint using
examination threats 3.51 * * 3.40 * * 2.45 * 3.62 * * 3.25 4.11 * * 3.88 * *
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Some professors use to revenge on students 3.45 3.45 2.65 3.48 3.28 3.20 3.49
Some professors are haughty and show a false
superiority over students 3.54 3.81 3.10 * 4.11 * * 3.59 3.60 3.94 * *
Table VII. Some professors are very subjective in
Average scores for grading student efforts 4.00 3.83 3.55 4.16 3.67 3.67 3.93
“personal aggression” Professors do not appreciate intellectual effort
dimension students make 3.07 3.03 2.48 * 3.11 3.22 3.30 3.41 * *

Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

Library room is too small 3.91 3.90 3.70 4.47 4.04 3.70 4.25
Number of books available in library is too
small 3.54 3.55 * * 2.67 * 3.58 3.56 2.80 3.61 * *
Library computers have low performances 3.59 3.56 3.00 3.71 3.58 4.10 3.65
Some of the classrooms should be remodelled 4.54 4.57 4.30 4.77 4.63 4.60 4.75
Classrooms should be cleaner 3.33 3.37 3.75 3.51 3.78 3.80 3.71
Students spend too much time for solving
problems at registrar office 4.59 * * 4.09 * 4.52 4.82 * * 4.34 4.90 4.65 * *
Table VIII. Communication between registrar personnel
Average scores for and students is very poor 4.33 * * 3.69 * 4.24 4.58 * * 4.00 4.70 * * 4.54 * *
“support services” More computer based exercises should be
dimension used during educational process 4.46 * * 3.78 * 3.38 * 3.62 * 4.03 4.10 3.72 *

Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts

The system of final thesis topic selection should be

improved 3.78 4.02 * * 3.24 * 4.09 * * 3.66 3.60 4.01 * *
Table IX. Thesis adviser does not spend enough time helping
Average scores for students 2.91 3.11 2.95 3.39 3.09 3.80 3.23
“thesis preparation” It is desired to have a more diverse courses in
dimension curriculum 3.70 3.41 3.00 * 3.37 3.47 3.50 3.86 * *
 (3) Course content, which groups items about usefulness of course contents, Customer
information richness, utility for professional education. satisfaction in
(4) Communication gates, which refers to professors’ openness for communicating higher education
with students.
(5) Timing and feedback, which involves pressures and stress due to inappropriate
time management for class scheduling, final grade posting, professors missing
classes.
133

Average scores
Items acct finbk bis mkt mgt intl cts
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Many projects are not relevant for business reality 3.62 3.38 2.81 3.12 3.26 3.44 3.62 Table X.
Some professors are not professionally well qualified 3.22 3.02 2.52 3.34 3.04 2.80 3.16 Average scores for “dark
Some professors can be bribed 3.37 * * 3.03 2.10 * 2.51 3.08 3.40 3.32 * * side” dimension

Items Pearson R 2 Sig.

Specialisation program shaped a good professional attitude on me 0.434 0.000

The specialisation I graduate has a wide spectrum of jobs I can work in 0.429 0.000
Specialisation program provided extended economic knowledge 0.409 0.000
Number of books available in library is too small 0.393 0.000
Specialisation program shaped the professional skills I need 0.369 0.000
Some of the projects have not been announced with a sufficient time lead 20.340 0.000
Many projects are not relevant for business reality 20.290 0.001
Thesis adviser does not spend enough time helping students 20.267 0.002
Some professors defend their standpoint using examination threats 20.260 0.003
Library computers have low performances 20.237 0.006 Table XI.
Library room is too small 0.234 0.006 Top 12 satisfaction items
Some professors are haughty and show a false superiority over students 20.230 0.007 for high ranked students

Items Pearson R 2 Sig.

Courses within specialisation meet the expectations I had when choosing this
program 0.546 0.000
Specialisation program shaped a good professional attitude on me 0.456 0.001
Some professors are very subjective in grading student efforts 20.431 0.003
The specialisation I graduate has a wide spectrum of jobs I can work in 0.386 0.007
Specialisation program provided extended economic knowledge 0.340 0.018
Professors do not appreciate intellectual effort students make 0.320 0.028
Some professors place useless workload projects on students 20.319 0.026
Some professors are haughty and show a false superiority over students 20.318 0.028
More computer based exercises should be used during educational process 20.318 0.031
Professors are opened for communicating with students 0.301 0.038 Table XII.
Some professors have misogynist remarks 20.297 0.040 Top 12 satisfaction items
Some of specialisation’s graduates are not professionally well educated 20.290 0.048 for low ranked students
 IJPSM (6) Pressure. This group involves two types of pressures that students are exposed
23,2 to: educational pressure (course and seminar workloads, exams, evaluations),
and personal aggression from professors (inappropriate vocabulary, threats
with difficult examination subjects).
(7) Support services concentrate secondary activities that provide help for
students: library resources, secretarial activities, classroom conditions.
134 (8) Thesis preparation clusters items regarding activities for final thesis
preparation. This group is less significant than the previous seven. It appears
due to temporal perspectives; empirical research was developed during the last
semester, when the pressure of this task concentrates.
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(9) “Dark side” (inappropriate behaviours) groups three items which refer to rather
hard to declare perceptions because of the highly sensitive behaviours they
describe.

Students’ perceptions on quality for each of these dimensions and each specialisation
are described below. Data with one asterisk ( *) denote statistically different averages in
a positive direction while data with two asterisks ( * *) denote statistically different
averages in a negative direction.

Long term professional horizon

This group comprises two subgroups of items which were not thought of as being
related: three which describe perceptions on education quality, and two which describe
perceptions on job placement markets.
Scores in Table I show clear strengths of Marketing specialisations, and major
weaknesses for commerce-tourism-services and finance-banking programs. Marketing
has statistically significant higher averages in four out of five items, and a high score
for “providing extended economic knowledge.” The reliability measure
Alpha-Cronbach ¼ 0:73 indicates a high level of internal consistency among these
five items.

Supplemental education
Under this dimension, there are six items that describe the perception of individual
progress due to educational factors from outside college (Table II).
Regarding scholarship programs in western universities, students in business
information systems and international business are favoured over other students,
especially those on a management program. On the other hand, the need for instruction
with Romanian business professionals scores higher than the need for teaching with
foreign professors. This might be due to language barriers rather than teacher
qualification. Alpha-Cronbach ¼ 0:67 indicates a high level of internal consistency.

Course content
Three items describe perceptions on course content quality. Scores show that, for
marketing students, theory taught on courses is related to business reality, a result
which contrasts with those for accounting and commerce-tourism-services programs.
The other two items show a minor strength for business information systems and a
relative weakness for the finance-banking program (Table III).
 The overall Alpha-Cronbach ¼ 0:32, which indicates a low consistency. However, if Customer
the item “Professors are taking care of course quality” is deleted from construct, satisfaction in
Cronbach alpha rises to 0.6, which indicates a higher correlation between the first three
items. higher education

Communication gates
This construct covers perception of communication quality between professors and 135
students. The last two items (out of four) are included in this group due to statistical
reasons (Table IV).
Business information systems program scores high in three out of four items,
considering that professors are very open when communicating with students,
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motivate students to express opinions, and evaluate in a quite objective manner. It is

interesting to note that marketing professors, who should be most focused on
communication, score lowest for the first item on list.
This group of items has a low Cronbach-Alpha: 0.28, which indicates this construct
needs further editing and refinement.

Timing and feedback

This group of seven items describes perception of the lead times and feedback offered
by professors. This group if items has a high degree of internal consistency (Cronbach
alpha ¼ 0:72) (Table V).
The business information systems program scores high in five out of seven items.
Accounting students indicate that time available for exam preparation is too short.
Marketing professors score low on feedback support; International Business students
are not satisfied because they do not have enough lead time in preparing projects and
because they have professors who miss class hours. Commerce-tourism-services
students have three reasons for not being satisfied: professors delay posting
examination results, professors do not provide an evaluation grid from the very
beginning, and text support is not made available.

Pressure and stress

This dimension describes perceptions about the stress students are exposed to during
educational programs. In a qualitative analysis, two different types of stress sources
were identified: stress due to course assignments and stress due to inappropriate
communication with professors (Table VI).
With regard to educational pressure, Accounting students are most dissatisfied;
they score lowest in three out of four items. The first item makes no difference across
all seven specialisations. The second group of items comprises stress sources due to the
perceived unnecessary aggression professors introduce in their communication with
students. Cronbach alpha ¼ 0:69 which indicates a satisfactory level of reliability.
As for personal aggression construct of items (shown in Table VII), Cronbach
alpha ¼ 0:85, which indicates a high level of internal consistency.
Results show a clear difference between perceptions of business information
systems and perceptions of al other six specialisations. For each of the nine items in the
group, their scores are on top position. “Quite dissatisfied” students are in
commerce-tourism-services, marketing, finance-banking, and accounting. Scores for
 IJPSM management students show a relatively satisfied state; they do not score the lowest for
23,2 any of the nine items.

Support services
These eight items refer to library, registrar, and classroom conditions. It is quite
interesting that items with such different issues are statistically related. However,
136 Cronbach alpha ¼ 0:53, and this measure would not improve significantly if any of
eight items were excluded from the construct (Table VIII).
Most items have high scores (in the negative direction), which means these services
should be improved within the next few years. However, students from
Finance-Banking are satisfied with services provided by the registrar’s office, while
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those in accounting, marketing and commerce-tourism-services are most dissatisfied.

Thesis preparation
This dimension is separate from all others and consists of two main items. A third item
is included in this statistical group even though qualitative content does not appear to
match. The Cronbach alpha ¼ 0:45, and indicates a low internal consistency (Table IX).
Business information systems students were the most positive – and are very
happy with the way they are treated by thesis advisors. Finance-banking, marketing
and commerce-tourism-services students are dissatisfied especially with the way thesis
topic was set.

“Dark side” (inappropriate behaviours)

Within this construct are items that qualitatively can be related to other constructs, but
statistics show they are different. The common factor they have is that they reveal
rather negative aspects. Also, the internal consistency analysis indicates a Cronbach
alpha value of 0.67 (Table X).
Scores show statistically relevant differences in responses about professors
accepting bribes. Overall three items, students in business information systems are
most satisfied.
A third objective of this research investigates statistical correlations between the
overall quality of each specialisation as perceived by its own students (internal
evaluation), and other specialisations’ students (external evaluation). In order to
evaluate these perceptions two items were used. The first item asked respondents to
evaluate overall quality for the program they pursued on a scale from 2 5 to þ 5. The
second item asked respondents to rate each if the ten specialisations on a 1-7 points
scale. The average scores from internal and external evaluations led to the situation
depicted in Figure 1.
Scores clearly reveal that business information systems ranks best on both
evaluations. The second position is taken by the marketing specialisation. Further, there
is a group of three specialisations (finance-banking, management, and accounting)
which have low scores for internal evaluation and average scores for external
evaluation). International business and commerce-tourism-services specialisations
score low for both evaluations. As with regard to statistical correlation between the two
mentioned evaluations, Pearson R 2 ¼ 0:640 (two-tailed sig: ¼ 0:122).
The fourth research objective investigates differences in overall satisfaction
constituents between high ranked students (n ¼ 106) and low ranked students
 Customer
satisfaction in
higher education

137
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Figure 1.
Specialisations positioning
in terms of internal and
external evaluations

(n ¼ 34). In order to discriminate students in terms of educational performance, three

equally sized groups were considered: high ranked students, medium ranked students,
and low ranked students. Criteria considered for this ranking is the total points score
(an equivalent of GPA score) during first four semesters. This four semester interval
was chosen because students were taking the core business courses, and they were
evaluated on similar examinations. For the last four semesters, students were taking
specialisation courses, where evaluations were slightly different from one program to
another. Questionnaires included identification items that were intended to help assign
the total points score. Of 339 valid questionnaires, 193 were identified and assigned
total points scores: 106 students are from the high ranked group, 53 are from the
medium ranked group, and 34 from the low ranked group.
Correlations between overall quality with specialisation program taken and each
satisfaction item were analysed. The top item for each construct is provided in
Tables XI and XII.
Four out of the top five items are constituents of the same group as identified within
previous paragraphs: long-term professional horizon. It is an indication that such an
issue is the most important for this group of students. Also, an important aspect is that
within the top 12 all three items regarding library conditions are included. As we will
see later, these items are of no concern for lower ranked students.
Lower ranked students have a different hierarchy, as seen in Table XII.
In contrast with their highly ranked colleagues, low ranked students associate
overall quality with items describing perceived personal aggression exerted by
professors. Of the top 12 satisfaction items list, four items describe this dimension:
(1) “Some professors are very subjective in grading student efforts”.
(2) “Professors do not appreciate intellectual effort students make”.
 IJPSM (3) “Some professors are haughty and show a false superiority over students”.
23,2 (4) “Some professors have misogynist remarks”.
Considering that a fifth item describing instructors’ behaviour is present in the top 12
on the list: “professors are opened for communicating with students”, we can conclude
that this issue is dominant among the constituent factors of perceived quality for low
138 ranked students. Instead, none of the three items regarding library conditions, which
are correlated with overall quality for high ranked students, are present in the top 12
list for this group.
Quite interesting is that “courses within specialisation meet the expectations I had
when choosing this program” is the highest correlated item with overall quality. This
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group of students seem to be content with the standards used for course teaching.
However, this item needs a further analysis, since the cluster analysis places it in a
separate area of the dendrogram, as not being correlated with any other items. Also,
the item “some professors have misogynist remarks” should be analysed for female
students only. By separating these subgroups, Pearson R 2 ¼ 20:183 (sig: ¼ 0:133) for
high ranked female students and Pearson R 2 ¼ 20:307 (sig: ¼ 0:113) for low ranked
female students.

Conclusions
Based on inter-item correlations, nine quality dimensions were identified: long-term
professional horizon, supplemental education, course content, communication gates,
timing and feedback, pressure, support services, thesis preparation, inappropriate
behaviours). For most of these dimensions, the internal consistency measure indicates
high levels of reliability (Cronbach alpha lies between 0.60 and 0.85).
Considering the objectives of the research, from an empirical standpoint we can
conclude that:
.
Issues describing the specificity of CEBA have been identified such as: “some
professors can be bribed”, “place useless workload projects on students”, “have
misogynist remarks”, “are haughty and show a false superiority over students”,
“defend their standpoint using examination threats”, “do not give feedback for
projects and examinations or some of the projects have not been announced with
a sufficient lead time”.
.
Differences exist in terms of satisfaction among specialisations. The most
satisfied students are those in business information systems and marketing. The
most dissatisfied are those in the commerce-tourism-services program.
.
A high and positive correlation between internal evaluation and external
evaluation of program quality holds. However, the Pearson correlation
coefficient is not statistically significant.
.
In terms of correlation between satisfaction items and the overall quality item,
there are differences. Some of the satisfaction experiences have greater impact on
perceived quality than others.
.
The most important satisfaction items in determining overall perceived quality
vary across groups of students. Considering the two groups (high ranked and
low ranked students in terms of their GPA scores), it can easily be observed that
the top 12 item lists are different. For high ranked students items regarding
 library condition are important, while for low ranked students matters such as Customer
exam evaluations and communication with professors come out top. satisfaction in
However, this research has several limitations. higher education
The first limitation is that some important satisfaction determinants might be lost
in the process of item generation. Since issues such as college web site and expected
income after graduation did not appear, they were not considered, though these issues 139
were appearing in previous interaction experiences with students. As a second
limitation, it is important to mention that several satisfaction items were overlapping
and were not clearly defined. A third limitation comes from sample structure; some
specialisations were poorly represented in terms of the number of students. These
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limitations ought to be corrected for any further research conducted on the basis of this
exploratory study.
All these important conclusions can be used for strategy formulation in managing
each specialisation. Identified weaknesses could be improved, while major strengths
can be used in providing high quality educational services for business students.

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Corresponding author
Corneliu Munteanu can be contacted at: cmuntean@uaic.ro

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