University image and its relationship to student satisfaction- case of the Middle Eastern private business schools

This work focuses on the study of the universities image with the aim of explaining the components of image and attributes of student satisfaction. Our study investigates the relationships between the different components of the university image and to what extent they may affect the students’ satisfaction. Hypotheses were drawn setting the relationships between the affective, cognitive and overall image in relation with satisfaction. The results of the empirical work carried out on a representative sample of 763 students located in 8 countries in the Middle East demonstrate that the cognitive component of image is an antecedent of the affective component. In turn, both of these components influence the formation of the overall image of a university. However the affective and overall images statistically and significantly affect the overall satisfaction of students with their university. The research could also be extended to cover the area of the Middle Eastern Basin and study the process of formation of the university image by various publics.