A theoretical framework for providing quality service to college degree programs.

Ardalan, Ali ; Rhiel, G. Steven ; Wermus, Marek 等

INTRODUCTION

Feigenbaum (1994) wrote that "quality of education is the key factor in invisible competition among nations." With the impact of education on the welfare of society becoming more evident, colleges and universities are looking for ways to improve the educational experience of their students. More and more citizens are holding educational institutions accountable for the quality of the education they provide. In response, colleges and universities are increasingly viewing students as customers who must be satisfied with the education they are receiving, and who must become highly productive members of society.

Adding to the growing challenges in higher education is the diminishing state and federal financial support most public universities are experiencing. Given the growing developments in educational technologies, innovative approaches for recruiting students, and creative strategies for improving student retention, academic-program directors have a complex task of selecting and updating quality improvement methods. Inherent in this endeavor is the view that universities are service organizations that must pick and choose where they invest their funds.

The growing impact of the service industry on the GDP of industrial nations has stimulated competition in this sector of the economies of these countries. Managers and academic researchers have intensified their efforts for understanding the basic elements of quality in a variety of service settings. A major step in this process was the identification of the five dimensions of service quality by which customers judge service (Parasuraman et al. 1985). The five dimensions are reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles. These authors discussed the innovative approach of analyzing how well a service delivery system matches customer expectations to determine customer satisfaction. The same researchers developed the survey instrument SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al. 1988) for measuring the five dimensions of service quality in retail organizations. They discussed the theoretical structure of the model and demonstrated its validity by applying it to four independent samples. While a very reliable instrument, researchers warn about the influence of external factors such as culture on the analysis and results derived from the use of this tool (Donthu & Yoo, 1998).

Several studies have employed SERVQUAL to identify the factors that customers perceive as important in a service setting, and to measure customer satisfaction with the delivery of service with respect to these factors. In an effort to improve the quality of public service, Brysland and Curry (2001) applied SERVQUAL to several areas of public service to measure the gap between citizens' expectations and the level of service they receive. They demonstrated the high strategic and operational value of this methodology in improving customer service.

Importance-Performance (IP) methodology is another major tool for analyzing service quality. This tool has also been used to identify the factors that customers perceive as important service quality characteristics. Several articles employ this methodology and the SERVQUAL instrument to improve service quality. Although these are interesting articles, their results are not highly relevant to this research and will not be included in this review of literature.

While service quality has been relatively well published, the efforts in improving service quality in higher education do not appear to be as extensively documented. The current literature on the quality of service in higher education can be classified in three categories. The review of literature for these categories is presented below.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The published articles in the first category analyze the quality of service in the whole organization. Avdejiva and Wilson (2002) explored the process and evolution of higher education institutions on the continuum from low-quality low-organizational learning environments to high-quality high-organizational learning capabilities in the four countries of Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They confirm the existence of the path organizations take to becoming learning organizations by using process and quality improvement, and they provide guidelines for managers in higher education who want to transition to a "learning institution" of higher education.

Through a case study of an Australian university, Athiyaman (1997) confirms the existence of the effect of disconfirmation (positive or negative) on expectations of student satisfaction in general and student satisfaction with service quality in higher education. His results reveal that a student's preconception of service quality in higher education affects their level of positive or negative disconfirmation, which will result in their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with service.

LeBlanc and Nguyen (1997) used SERVQUAL and concluded that the most important factors that define service quality in higher education, in the order of importance, are the reputation of the institution, the quality of its administrative personnel, the quality of its faculty, the quality of its curriculum, the responsiveness of its personnel, the physical attributes of the university, and the students' access to university facilities.

Pariseau (1997) conducted research in several universities in the Northeast region of the United States to define the factors that faculty and students perceive to be the determinants of service quality and to compare how the faculty and students ranked these factors with respect to their effect on service quality. Their results were that faculty perceive, in the order of performance, assurance, tangibles, reliability, empathy, and responsiveness as important. On the other hand, students perceive assurance, knowledge, courtesy, the ability to inspire trust and confidence, responsiveness, empathy, reliability, and tangibles as the most important characteristics of service quality.

Ford et al. (1999) surveyed students in several universities in New Zealand and a major university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. They concluded that the important quality factors in the order of importance were academic reputation, career opportunities, program issues, physical aspects, and the location of the institution.

Tan and Kek (2004) modified SERVQUAL and adapted it for higher education environments, and used it at two universities in Singapore. They identified factors that students felt were important for delivery of high quality service and they determined the existence of any differences between university groups, such as freshman vs. sophomores, with respect to their quality assessments.

Mostafa (2006) considered a variety of factors in a SERVQUAL application in higher education in Egypt. He concluded that the following factors were very important: instilling confidence in students; having visually appealing facilities; having modern equipment; having visually appealing materials such as handouts and syllabi; having faculty and staff that do what they promise, on time; having faculty and staff who are always willing to help students; providing a safe environment; and having convenient class times and office hours. He also concluded that the following characteristics of academic staff and professors were of low priority: never being too busy to respond to students' requests; giving students personal and individual attention; showing a sincere interest in solving a student's problems; performing services right the first time; keeping error-free records; giving prompt service to students; and understanding the specific needs of their students.

Faganel (2010) adapted SERVQUAL to a higher education setting through feedback from several focus groups. Based on the reviews of the feedback, a survey was developed and administered. The results indicated that from a staff perspective, timely information about the time and place of services, the willingness to help students, the knowledge to answer student questions, and the appearance of faculty and buildings were the important factors that defined quality service. On the other hand, from the students' point of view, timely and regular information about time and place of services, knowledgeable employees to answer student questions, and the appearance of faculty members and university buildings were the most important factors.

Oldfield and Baron (2000) took a different approach by classifying the factors as: the requisite elements, acceptable elements, and functional elements. O'Neil and Palmer (2004) assigned different weights to different factors and suggested factor prioritization based on the Pareto phenomenon.

The second category includes Service Quality of a Service Unit in a Higher Education Institution. The authors could find only one published article in this category that used SERVQUAL. Smith et al. (2007) analyzed the quality of service in the information technology service department of a higher education institution in the UK. They found that the staff defined quality-service factors to be responsiveness, assurance, and empathy, while students perceive quality factors to be reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles.

Wright and O'Neill (2002) used the importance-conformance method to measure student perception of quality in an online library service in a university in Perth, Western Australia. They suggest that higher education administrators should deploy total quality management in all aspects of the student education process for effective quality management. In addition, some of the factors that administrators may assume to be important for providing high-quality service may be seen by students as relatively unimportant.

The third category includes Service Quality of Instructors and Lecturers. There are several published works related to service quality of instructors and lecturers. Anderson (2000) found that the attributes in faculty that students found important include being caring, being enthusiastic, and having an interest in student progress. Lammers et al. (2002) noted that the important factors are being enthusiastic, inspiring, knowledgeable, and helpful. Brown et al (2004) concluded that students felt that instructors should be knowledgeable, willing to help, approachable, and should have a good sense of humor. And finally, Voss, et al. (2007) reported that the most important factors are for faculty to be knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and approachable.

The survey of literature reveals that while there is a significant amount of interest and value in research about the quality of service in higher education, the research related to programs of study has been very fragmented. Total quality management stresses the importance of the role of each segment of an organization in improving the quality of the product of that organization, Deming (1992). Contrary to this notion, as we demonstrated in the literature review, most of the research on the quality of service in higher education has focused on the university as a whole. Hence, there is a need for research to improve the understanding of service quality in the various components within a university.

The purpose of this study is to present factors which fit into a framework (presented in Figure 1, Appendix 1) that helps program directors in their quest for providing high quality service to their students. In addition, this study offers suggestions on how universities can apply the factors within their present financial constraints. Degree programs are very important entities within institutes of higher education. In general, different programs in a higher education institution may have different levels of service quality. That is, some programs may provide a higher quality of service to their students than others, and most probably, would be ranked higher within and outside the university. Therefore, it is very important for managers/department chairs/program directors to realize which factors define the quality of the education they provide. In this study, we provide a framework which facilitates the study of these factors and their effect on program service quality, and consequently provides higher quality service to students.

DIMENSIONS OF QUALITY SERVICE FOR PROGRAMS OF STUDY

This section presents the factors that build student satisfaction with program services based on the five dimensions of service quality. These factors were derived collaboratively from the extensive experience and knowledge of a faculty member, a department chair, and the associate dean of a college. These three faculty members each have about 30 years of experience in teaching and administering university programs.

A major goal in developing the factors was to offer university administrators and faculty a structure for providing services to their students so that the students have a successful experience in their programs. While some of these factors may be similar to those found in the literature, the context in which they are used is considerably different from the contexts found in the previous research in a specific way. The context examined in this paper is a degree program. To the best of the authors' knowledge this is the first attempt on identifying the factors that affect service quality of a degree program. This is a significant contribution to the current literature that has used three other contexts; the university level, service-units level, or instructor level, as was presented before. While most ranking and benchmarking efforts focus on programs of study, studies that identify the important factors in student satisfaction with programs are absent in the body of literature.

The following section discusses the factors and how they fit into Fitzsimmons (2008) five dimensions of service quality. In addition, we provide suggestions on how the services can be achieved under the current financial funding reduction that many higher education institutions are experiencing. We define each of the dimensions of service quality, discuss the proposed factors associated with each dimension, and provide suggestions on how to provide high-quality services economically.

Reliability Dimension--Fitzsimmons (2008) defines reliability as the ability to perform the promised service both dependably and accurately. Reliable service performance is a customer expectation and means that the service is accomplished on time, in the same manner, and without errors every time.

LeBlanc and Nguyen (1997) identified curriculum as an important factor of service quality within a university, and Mostafa (2006) found that convenient class-times is a significant university service component. Since these factors are significant in service quality at the university level they should have a positive effect on service quality at the program level. This paper suggests the following factors may be important program-service components within the reliability dimension.

Factors

Course Schedule: "Course Schedule" refers to offering courses on a timely and consistent basis.

Catalog: "Catalog" refers to honoring the commitment to the students to schedule all of the courses listed in the course catalog. In addition, it refers to offering these courses to allow students to graduate on time, even when programs are discontinued.

Advising: This factor involves having knowledgeable and nurturing advisors to help students adjust to college life, and guide the students throughout their programs.

Financial Aid: This factor refers to having clearly-defined, easy-to-understand procedures and paperwork for applying for financial aid and to provide delivery of the aid on time.

Facilities: "Facilities" refers to providing access to university buildings such as libraries, labs, and recreational rooms as promised.

Instructors: The factor "Instructors" refers to faculty members presenting well planned and executed classes to give students the best opportunity for academic success. This includes informing students about all course requirements at or before the first class meeting, following the syllabus, being on time to class, using class time properly, returning grades (tests and assignments) on time, and answering all questions in, and outside the classroom. It also includes instructors being prepared for class, being available to students when promised and stated on the syllabus, holding office hours and appointments with students, and, generally, delivering classes as stated on the syllabus.

Suggestions

The ability to provide courses and programs as promised requires faculty to stay abreast of curriculum issues. As programs and courses become obsolete, they should immediately be removed from the university catalog. If not enough faculty members are available to teach all of the courses in a program, efforts should be made to tighten up the program, and to find ways to offer the necessary courses by using resources inside and outside the department. If faculty reductions are severe, it may be necessary to close those affected programs and remove them from the university catalog, but students who are already in the program should be allowed to finish their course of study.

To have student-friendly and knowledgeable faculty members involved in the advising of students, appropriate credit should be given to the faculty. Faculty members become involved in service activities when the activity is seen as an important and rewarded endeavor. Administrators must make this activity a significant part of the faculty member's evaluation. Without proper incentives it will be difficult to find talented faculty who are willing to take on advising as an important service activity.

A student friendly on-line system should be in place to assist students in learning about and applying for financial aid. The key ingredient here is the simplicity in using the system. To be cost effective, universities should collaborate with state and national programs to provide the best service.

As part of the orientation program for newly hired faculty and some of the returning faculty who are interested in improving their teaching, a training session prior to the start of the semester would be very helpful. These training sessions should address many of the points about teaching that were presented earlier.

Communication with students to welcome them to the class and keep them updated about course requirements should be accomplished in a systematic and a user-friendly system.

Responsiveness Dimension--Fitzsimmons (2008) defines responsiveness as the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service and the ability to recover quickly and with professionalism if a service failure occurs.

LeBlanc and Nguyen (1997) and Pariseau (1997) identified responsiveness as an important dimension of service quality in a university. At the program level within a university, this study suggests several factors that define this dimension and contribute to the students' satisfaction with the service they receive in their programs. These factors are defined below.

Factors

Course Registration: This factor is about making the registration process smooth and timely. It includes such things as giving priority to senior students so they can graduate on time and making overloads available for students who have experienced unexpected circumstances.

Learning Aids: This includes offering tutorials or extra help for courses which historically are difficult for students and having university, centralized units which handle such issues as technical, computer problems in-and out-of the classroom.

Instructor Access: Mostafa (2006) found that an important service factor is that faculty members hold convenient office hours. This paper suggests that "Instructor Access" at the program level includes the following: instructors who are friendly and supportive of students and who are willing to respond to individual, special needs of students. Other desirable service traits of instructors include their willingness to be flexible in things like accommodating students' work schedules or other pertinent duties, providing students with a home or cell telephone number, and if necessary, scheduling meetings with students at non-standard times. "Instructor Access" also includes coming to class early to answer students' questions, providing a method for frequent student feedback, and responding promptly to student questions about homework, assignments, and tests.

Student Needs: The "Student Needs" factor includes the following: instructors allowing, within reason, make-up tests and assignments when told in advance about students' conflict in meeting the due dates; using current technologies; providing handouts and course documents through an electronic medium such as Blackboard; informing students about where they stand with their grades; and assuring students that in cases where an instructor is unable to attend a class or is unable to continue classes, the department will provide a solution which is satisfactory to the students.

Staff: Faganel (2010) identified the knowledge of staff members and their ability to answer student questions as important factors in serving students. At the program level this factor requires executive assistants and program staff personnel to be knowledgeable about issues students encounter and to be ready to provide solutions as necessary or know who to send the students to get their questions answered.

Suggestions

In most cases the technical needs of the students should be the responsibility of a specific university unit. Lack of presence of such a unit puts substantial strain on the lower level units of the university and, most likely, results in substandard service to the students.

To be responsive to student problems and their academic needs, faculty members need to be willing to put forth the extra effort to work with the students to address the students' concerns. This should not result in any additional financial burden to the university. To facilitate these behaviors by faculty, departments or colleges/schools could come to some agreement about how to encourage the faculty to treat students in a fair and helpful way as outlined above.

For staff to be able to respond to students' needs they should be educated about what they can respond to and, when they do not know the answers, to whom they should refer the students. Trainings for staff members could be provided at the department or the college level to educate them about program issues.

Assurance Dimension--Fitzsimmons (2008) defines assurance as the knowledge and courtesy of employees as well as their ability to convey trust and confidence, competence to perform the service, politeness and respect for the customer, effective communication with the customer, and the general attitude that the server has the customer's best interest at heart.

Factors

Safety: An Assurance dimension factor identified by Mostafa (2006) as an important to quality service is that students want to feel safe. We define the characteristics of the "Safety" factor as having a campus that is designed and organized in such a way that students feel safe within the campus and its surrounding neighborhoods and having campus police who are trained to not only protect the students, but to treat them in such a way as to build confidence that they will protect and care for them.

Program Standards: Pariseau (1997), Lammers (2002), Brown et al (2004), and Mostafa (2006) found that having knowledgeable faculty is a very important service factor. This paper defines "Program Standards" as maintaining appropriate accreditation, having knowledgeable faculty, and establishing quality programs that students will embrace.

Instructor Credentials: This factor refers to faculty members having the proper degree qualifications to teach the courses and the communication skills to allow the students to follow the class lectures. Included in this category is the clear delivery of class material, appropriate mix of theory and practical implications, and skill in answering all relevant questions with respect, courtesy, and knowledge.

Suggestions

Accreditation, of course, is accomplished first at the university level, then the college or school level, and finally, at the program level. Each of these units should be responsible for maintaining accreditation at their level. Part of accreditation is to maintain faculty with the appropriate credentials to teach the courses in the program. Beyond accreditation, much can be achieved to ensure a quality education for the students without having a major impact on the budget of the department or college/school. This can happen, simply, by faculty members being conscientious in preparing for teaching their classes. With new faculty members, training sessions at the beginning of their careers could set them on the correct track in presenting well thought-out courses and lectures for their students.

Empathy Dimension--Fitzsimmons (2008) defines empathy as the provision of caring, individualized attention to customers, approachability, sensitivity, and effort to understand the customer's needs.

In his research, Paruseau (1997) found that empathy was an important faculty characteristic to students. This paper suggests the following additional factors for providing quality service.

Factors

Instructor Compassion: "Instructor Compassion" is defined as instructors treating students in a friendly, patient, respectful manner, which gives the students the comfort level to visit the instructor's office and talk about personal problems that are relevant to the class performance.

Instructor Interaction: "Instructor Interaction" is characterized by the instructor responding to reasonable student requests for assistance with a prompt and appropriate response. This includes instructors being supportive of students' every day and/or extracurricular activities, like participation in university sponsored activities.

Suggestions

Once again these issues should not impact the budget of the department or college/school. They can be achieved quite successfully by obtaining faculty agreement about what is an appropriate approach to these issues. Then, a conscientious effort should be made by the faculty members to adhere to them. With new faculty members, these topics could be addressed in a training session at the beginning of their career.

Tangibles Dimension--Fitzsimmons (2008) defines tangibles as the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials such as brochures or letters.

Factors

Campus: Faganel (2010) and Mostafa (2006) identified the physical appearance of the campus as an important factor to serving the students. The "Campus" factor is defined as having a program that is housed in an attractive and well-designed building to provide the students with a sense of belonging and pride in their programs.

Course Materials: Mostafa (2006) emphasized the physical appearance of course materials as an important factor in the Tangibles Dimension. This paper defines the "Course Materials" factor as follows: A comprehensive and easy to understand syllabus is made available a few days before the first class meeting and remains available for the entire semester, posted on a medium such as Blackboard. Exams and other handouts have a professional and pleasing appearance, as well.

Classroom: The "Classroom" factor is defined as having a clean, adequately lighted room with a comfortable temperature and with desks and chairs in good shape. This may entail the instructor making sure, prior to the start of the class, that all supporting accessories such as computer hardware and software, chalk or markers, and so on are in adequate supply and in working order and that the board or screen is easily legible, not only from the front rows but by the students in back rows as well.

Labs: This factor is defined by computer labs having the necessary software installed and made available to students.

Library: The "Library" factor entails having a library that carries materials relevant to the students' classes and that provides training to students on how to use the library resources.

Suggestions

Usually public universities' physical plants are funded by the state. Hence, it has not always been possible to build the buildings that give the students the campus they would consider high quality. A recent trend at some universities is to partner with private industries to enhance the campuses and provide the physical structures to meet student needs. Most universities are now collaborating with private industries to provide on-campus dining services and many other services students needed to have a successful college career. In order to meet student needs, we suggest that universities further investigate partnerships with private industries. We suggest this approach especially for those states where sufficient support for higher education is not forthcoming.

To prepare instructors to teach a class successfully, a list of pertinent activities that they should complete before the beginning of each semester should be provided to faculty members. This list could be created by a faculty committee or provided by experienced, senior faculty members.

DISCUSSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH

This article suggested a number of factors which are important for offering a high-quality degree program. These factors were identified by three faculty members who have extensive experience in teaching and administering college programs. The factors are based on the five dimensions of quality service and are the corner-stone for the theoretical framework that is graphically presented in Figure 1 (see Appendix 1).

This framework suggests that there are a number of factors that define each service quality dimension and that the dimensions impact program service quality. However, the suggested relationships in the theoretical framework have not been formally tested, indicating that additional research in this area is needed. Future research may be extended in at least two ways. First, researchers and practitioners may propose and discuss factors that should be added to the proposed framework. Second, formal empirical studies should be conducted to test the impact of the dimensions on quality of service and, further, to determine which dimensions and their associated factors are the most important from both the perspectives of students and program directors.

APPENDIX 1

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

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Ali Ardalan

G. Steven Rhiel

Marek Wermus

Old Dominion University

Ali Ardalan is Associate Dean of the College of Business and Public Administration at Old Dominion University He earned his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Arizona in 1983. He has published in Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, IIE Transactions, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Purchasing and Materials Management, Engineering Economist, Industrial Management and Data Systems, and Computers and Operations Research.

Steve Rhiel is Chair of IT/Decisions Sciences at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Statistics from the University of Northern Colorado. He has published articles in Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Communications in Statistics-Simulation and Computation, Industrial Relations, Journal of Statistics Education, Psychological Reports, and Review of Business and Economic Research.

Marek Wermus is an Associate Professor of IT/Decisions Sciences in Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland. He has published articles in Interfaces, Production and Inventory Management Journal, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, and Journal for East European Management Studies.