Investigating Service Quality Issues in Higher Educational Context

Abstract Recently, quality issues have been widely addressed in the higher education sector as a result of which the identification and the role of stakeholders have come to the forefront. When evaluating service quality in higher education, three distinct levels of operation could be taken into account, namely, institutional level, program or faculty level and course level, on which the relevant stakeholders perceive service quality by focusing on different attributes. Besides students considered as primary stakeholders, the academic staff is paid considerable attention as they have a direct influence on how students perceive educational service quality. The establishment of a course level service quality framework of a special course is presented in this paper by demonstrating not only the students’ but also the supervisors’ aspects through a student questionnaire, focus group discussions and personal interviews. These approaches resulted in a new, more sophisticated understanding of service quality on course level.