Perceptions of international students on service quality delivery in a Malaysian public university
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684881211219406 |
| Date | 20 April 2012 |
| Published date | 20 April 2012 |
| Pages | 153-163 |
| Author | Baboucarr Njie,Soaib Asimiran,Roselan Baki |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Perceptions of international
students on service quality
delivery in a Malaysian public
university
Baboucarr Njie
University of the Gambia, Kanifing, The Gambia, and
Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selanghor,
Malaysia, and
Soaib Asimiran and Roselan Baki
Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selanghor, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of international students of service
quality delivery (SQD) in a Malaysian public university.
Design/methodology/approach – The study was limited to the University’s immediate physical
environment and its associated human and systems-based services. The physical environment in this
study focused on the University buildings and all their contents, for example, the physical structures
and infrastructure and related services. Qualitative methods were used and purposeful sampling was
employed to select six international students from three different regions who were attending graduate
level programs in a Malaysian public university to give their views on the quality of service delivery
directly linked to the physical environment of the university. An understanding of students’ thoughts
and expectations of the quality of services offered, especially given that they were from varied social
and cultural settings, is crucial to the adoption of measures for continuous improvement in today’s
customer driven higher educational market.
Findings – The results show that the university is appreciated for its environmental friendly
vegetation, numerous facilities and several policies and regulations allied to its environment but they
also show gaps between the well developed policies and their corresponding implementation; the
results also evoke the differences in understanding and implementation of services, requiring empathy
in today’s education world, between senior staff and their junior counterparts as well as interpretation
of experiences of services encountered by international students.
Originality/value – The findings and discussion, especially with regard to the systems and human
related service responses, could serve as a base for understanding some of the thoughts of
international students and could be replicated on other campuses with a view to understanding how
other students feel about their physical environments and the related services as well.
Keywords Service quality,Universities, Internationalstudents, Malaysia, Individualperception
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Service quality delivery presents the public face an institution is identified with and
this identity is gaining ground as an important consideration in higher educational
institutions. Service quality assesses the performance of products and services from
the customers perspective (Manjunatha and Shivalingaiah, 2004). Thus the customer
plays a pivotal role in determining the level of satisfaction with a given product or
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Perceptions of
international
students
153
Quality Assurance in Education
Vol. 20 No. 2, 2012
pp. 153-163
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/09684881211219406
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