Antecedents of private university students’ satisfaction: The effects of traditional and electronic service quality

Leonnard Leonnard

doi:10.7160/eriesj.2021.140303

Abstract

High competition in the higher education sector, especially private universities, has brought a high attention to service quality that can increase students’ satisfaction and their retention rates. This study aimed to investigate the effect of traditional and electronic service quality of private universities in Jakarta on students’ satisfaction. A total of 151 students’ responses from three private universities in Jakarta were collected. A factor analysis with the Principal Component Analysis method with Varimax rotation, Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Importance Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) were performed. The results proved that perceived value of traditional service quality and perceived web value significantly affected student satisfaction. The three indicators of perceived quality provided by administrative staff (b=0.198), perceived quality of university infrastructure (β=0.333), and perceived quality of support services (β=0.362) significantly affected students’ satisfaction while in the context of electronic service quality, only accessibility (β=0.469) and attractiveness (β=0.123) had significant effects on students’ satisfaction. Furthermore, the two-dimensional IPMA matrix indicated the dominance of importance (score=0.621) and performance (score=66.438) of perceived value over the perceived web value.

Highlights

High competition in the educational sector has encouraged universities to focus on providing high service quality
Traditional perceived service quality is explained by constructing perceived quality delivered by teaching staff (3 indicators), perceived quality delivered by administrative staff (6 indicators), perceived quality of university infrastructure (6 indicators), and perceived quality of support services (3 indicators)
Satisfaction is an endogenous construct that is affected by other constructs directly and indirectly

Summary

Introduction

High competition in the educational sector has encouraged universities to focus on providing high service quality. According to Indonesian Law Number 12 of 2012, private universities do not receive operating funds from the government, they have to raise funds independently for operating expenses, lecturer as well as education staff salaries, investment and university development (Kemdikbud, 2014). This is in accordance with the statement by the Asian Development Bank (2012) that private universities in Indonesia face three key problems of quality variation, higher education costs, and difficulty in gaining financial assistance. Apart from funding, the number of students is one of the indicators of a decent university since the Indonesian Ministry of Research and Technology requires those with fewer than 1,000 students to merge (Oebaidillah, 2021)

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