Evaluation of university services quality: perspectives of international students in Iran

One of the important components of the internationalization of higher education is recruiting international students.  Despite the small number of international students and due the effects and consequences of their education on the educational systems of different countries, their satisfaction with the quality of university services is important.  Given the importance of this issue, few studies have focused on the evaluation of the quality of university services from the point of view of international students in Iran. Therefore, the purpose of this descriptive survey study was to evaluate the quality of university services from the point of view of international students studying at Shahid Beheshti University. The statistical population was all 221 international students studying at Shahid Beheshti University.  sample size was determined 140 via Krejci & Morgan table. Based on simple random sampling method and Considering the drop coefficient, 150 questionnaires were distributed among students and 126 questionnaires were collected. The instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire. It included 6 components of the quality of university services including educational-research services, library, and media services, administrative services, welfare services, physical spaces, social and cultural services. These 6 components were measured in expectations and real existing levels. To assess the validity of the questionnaire, the opinions of academic experts was used and the reliability of the questionnaire was estimated at 0.96 at the expectations and 0.96 at the existing   levels, using the Cronbach's alpha test. Findings indicated that there is a gap between the expectations and reality (p=0.001). Most gaps between expectations and reality included the quality of administrative services (-1.45) and the quality of educational and research services (-0.73).