Measuring Quality in Higher Education

Abstract The service quality literature demonstrates that when seeking to design tools that measure quality, it is important not to overlook fundamental questions such as ‘What is service quality?’, ‘What do the various instruments designed to measure service quality actually measure?’, ‘Do these instruments use the best questions?’ and ‘What is the relationship between quality measurement and continuous quality improvement?’. The first part of this article identifies the contexts in which educational or service quality measurement may be applied in higher education, and reviews research and practice. The second part of the article introduces SERVQUAL, as a focus for the debate surrounding the instruments for measuring quality that have been reported in the service‐quality literature. The two distinct literatures, those of educational quality and those of service quality, each have some insights to contribute, but each has its own inherent debates. Exploring and integrating these issues for application in...

[1]  Ted Marchese.  TQM Reaches the Academy. , 1991 .

[2]  C. Hjorth-Andersen,et al.  The Concept of Quality and the Efficiency of Markets for Consumer Products , 1984 .

[3]  P. Danaher,et al.  Customer Satisfaction during the Service Delivery Process , 1994 .

[4]  John Hattie,et al.  Performance Indicators in Education , 1990 .

[5]  Herbert W. Marsh,et al.  The Use of Students’ Evaluations and an Individually Structured Intervention to Enhance University Teaching Effectiveness , 1993 .

[6]  Elaine Martin,et al.  SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT AND SIXTH FORM PUPILS‘ APPROACHES TO LEARNING , 1989 .

[7]  E. Baxter.  The teval experience, 1983–88: The impact of a student evaluation of teaching scheme on university teachers , 1991 .

[8]  R. Rust,et al.  Return on Quality (ROQ): Making Service Quality Financially Accountable , 1995 .

[9]  N. Entwistle,et al.  EFFECTS OF ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS ON STUDENTS' APPROACHES TO STUDYING , 1981 .

[10]  John S. Oakland,et al.  Total Quality Management in Services: Part 1: Understanding and Classifying Services , 1994 .

[11]  J. Rowley.  Customer experience of libraries , 1994 .

[12]  Sherriff T. K. Luk,et al.  Value Segmentation of Tourists' Expectations of Service Quality , 1994 .

[13]  R. C. Wilson.  Improving Faculty Teaching: Effective Use of Student Evaluations and Consultants. , 1986 .

[14]  James A. Fitzsimmons,et al.  A Walk-Through Audit to Improve Restaurant Performance , 1991 .

[15]  W. Sasser.  The Management of Service Operations. , 1974 .

[16]  Kathleen T. Brinko.  The interactions of teaching improvement , 1991 .

[17]  Jagdip Singh.  Understanding the structure of consumers’ satisfaction evaluations of service delivery , 1991 .

[18]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. , 1988 .

[19]  P. Ewell.  Assessment and TQM: In Search of Convergence. , 1991 .

[20]  Organizational Culture, Rewards and Quality in Higher Education , 1993 .

[21]  Kim D Freeman,et al.  Measuring the Perceived Quality of Professional Business Services , 1993 .

[22]  N. Entwistle,et al.  Approaches to learning, evaluations of teaching, and preferences for contrasting academic environments , 1990 .

[23]  Steven A. Taylor,et al.  Measuring Service Quality: A Reexamination and Extension , 1992 .

[24]  P. A. Cohen.  Student Ratings of Instruction and Student Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Multisection Validity Studies , 1981 .

[25]  R. Oliver.  Measurement and evaluation of satisfaction processes in retail settings. , 1981 .

[26]  H. Marsh,et al.  Students' Evaluations of Teaching: An Update. AAHE-ERIC Higher Education Research Currents. , 1982 .

[27]  Robert Cornesky,et al.  Implementing Total Quality Management in Higher Education. , 1991 .

[28]  Allan Bolton,et al.  A rose by any other name: TQM in higher education , 1995 .

[29]  Ingrid Moses,et al.  Academic development units and the improvement of teaching , 1985 .

[30]  Anne Bell.  User satisfaction surveys : experience at Leicester , 1995 .

[31]  Emin Babakus,et al.  An empirical assessment of the SERVQUAL scale , 1992 .

[32]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research , 1985 .

[33]  Michael Prosser,et al.  Student evaluations of teaching and courses: Student study strategies as a criterion of validity , 1990 .

[34]  Valarie A. Zeithaml,et al.  Defining and relating price, perceived quality, and perceived value , 1987 .

[35]  Alan W. Lindsay.  Concepts of Quality in Higher Education , 1992 .

[36]  David C. Bojanic.  Quality Measurement in Professional Services Firms , 1991 .

[37]  R. Ball,et al.  Performance indicators in higher education , 1987 .

[38]  John S. Oakland,et al.  Total Quality Management in Services , 1994 .

[39]  Kenneth A. Feldman,et al.  Class size and college students' evaluations of teachers and courses: A closer look , 1984 .

[40]  P. Abrami,et al.  Students' Evaluations of University Teaching: Research Findings, Methodological Issues, and Directions for Future Research , 1987 .

[41]  G. R. Fick,et al.  Measuring Service Quality in the Travel and Tourism Industry , 1991 .

[42]  Kirk R. Karwan,et al.  Prioritizing the Dimensions of Service Quality , 1994 .

[43]  Peter J. Danaher,et al.  Cumulative Encounter Satisfaction in the Hotel Conference Process , 1994 .

[44]  P. Ramsden.  A performance indicator of teaching quality in higher education: The Course Experience Questionnaire , 1991 .

[45]  Chris Ryan,et al.  Analysing Service Quality in the Hospitality Industry Using the SERVQUAL Model , 1991 .

[46]  R. B. Chase.  Production And Operations Management: A Life Cycle Approach , 1973 .