Service quality and student satisfaction: a case study on private universities in Bangladesh

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. In addition, the present student is a customer seeking an educational program that will prepare him/her for a successful career and gainful employment. 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 attempts to examine the relationship between service quality dimensions and overall service quality (tangibility, responsiveness, reliability, assurance and empathy) and students satisfaction. Furthermore, this study is also examining critical factors in service quality dimensions (tangibility, responsiveness, reliability, assurance and empathy) that contribute most to the satisfaction of the students. This study was conducted using a set of questionnaire to 550 Business students from Private University institutions, Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Among the respondents, male respondents were 411, thus representing 75% of the total population, whereas the female respondents were 139 and thus representing 25% of the total population. All the respondents are undergraduate students. Majority of the Student population were between 18 to 24 years of age group. There is a significant correlation among all the constructs with student satisfaction. Factor 1 is by far the most important, accounting for the largest proportion of the variance (34 per cent), with eigenvalues greater than 3.00 (10.596). This factor includes a group of statements related to environment and facilities of the university, and is labeled here ‘tangibles’.