Perception of Undergraduates on Service Quality of Higher Education in Sri Lanka

Abstract

A significant restructuring in higher education services has been processed in both European and Asian contexts recently. As a developing country, Sri Lanka needs much more to move towards an economic development within the nation thus ensuring service quality of higher education is required to enhance the competitiveness within the educational sector. Hence, the study focuses on identifying the students’ perception towards the service quality in higher education as they are the primary customers who utilize the higher education service. An online survey was conducted for the randomly selected 311 undergraduates of the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka.The study covers six dimensions of HEdPERF scale; academic, non-academic, reputation, access, understanding, and program issues that measure the service quality of higher education. All the statements given to the respondents’ perception regarding the quality of higher education are proven as valid and significant by the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test (p=0.000). Accordingly, students believe that quality service can be obtained from the academic and non-academic staff of the faculty, and they consider that the hostel facilities, academic facilities, ability of producing employable graduates, and academic programs of the faculty are reputable. Moreover, the faculty has good access and interestingly, it possesses well-organized academic programs with a flexible syllabus, proper structure, sound orientation program and variety of specialization programs. The faculty maintains a good understanding of the counselling service, health service, ideal campus layout/location, and quick response to students' requests for assistance. The results reveal that the undergraduates’ overall satisfaction level of the service quality provided by the faculty is valid and significant (p=0.000). Interestingly, the majority (46.9%) of the undergraduates are satisfied with the overall service quality while 32.8% have a strong satisfaction.14.1% of the sample shows a neutral approach while 4.5% and 1.6% have dissatisfaction and a strong dissatisfaction respectively. Hence, the research findings will be beneficial for the respective higher education providers to offer satisfactory services for the Sri Lankan students.