The Mediating Role of Placement in Service Quality of Education: From International Students’ Perspective

The drive of this investigation is to diagnose the mediation effect of placement between program quality, industrial link, student satisfaction, and service quality in the circumstance of tertiary education in Malaysia. Using the Cue Utilization theory, the proposed model is tested employing data collected from 173 international students who are pursuing study at University Utara Malaysia through the convenient sampling approach. The analysis is conducted through the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).The goodness of fit model is ensured through RMSEA (< 0.08), CFI (> 0.90), and Chisq/Df ratio (< 5.0) fit indices. The findings reveal that placement mediates fully between industrial link and service quality of education. However, placement does not confirm any significant mediation effects between program quality, student satisfaction and service quality. Results give the impression to suggest that program quality and student satisfaction are influencing service quality directly and significantly. The findings of this study have potentially valuable implications for service quality improvement in higher education context of Malaysia by reinforcing placement, program quality, industrial link and student satisfaction. The results signify amply by approving the mediating influence of placement about industrial link and service quality of education respecting international students.