Abstract
The quality of higher education systems currently represents a major challenge for the development of societies. In Morocco, engineering education is at the heart of this development, it is a major and necessary lever which, due to an increasingly demanding job market, faces several challenges. According to Moroccan Directorate for Strategies and Information Systems (2018) these challenges are classified into two categories: quantitative (low rate of Moroccan engineers compared to global figures; 1.57 graduates in engineering per 10,000 inhabitants in 2016) and qualitative (adaptation of the academic curriculum to the needs of the job market). However, little work has been done on the introduction of service assessment tools in higher education in Morocco (Akrim, Figari, Mottier-Lopez, & Talbi, 2010).In our article, we are interested in the SERVQUAL method (SERVice QUALity-Quality of Service). This approach, initially designed to measure customer satisfaction in a company, allows, when applied to higher education, to measure student satisfaction at the university. Based on a bibliographic research, we have identified the five dimensions of the model that impact the quality of service.Through the application of this model to a sample of students from a public engineering school, we have been able to determine that tangible elements and physical installations have the biggest impact on service quality with a negative quality gap (-2.0275). As a result, more efforts are needed in these dimensions to improve service quality.In conclusion, the SERVQUAL model, applied to the educational system and more precisely higher education, allows to quantify the non-quality by measuring the gap between the perception of the students and their expectations for a good service. It has the advantage of helping decision-makers take corrective actions needed to improve the service quality provided by universities as a part of a process of continuous improvement to achieve higher degree of excellence.
Highlights
Continuous improvement of service quality and sustainable development of higher educational institutions remain at the heart of any progress and/or development of any society
The objective of this study is to identify factors having an important role in improving the service quality within an engineering school and provide a conceptual and operational framework for the decision-making by focusing on reducing non-quality gaps
The quality of the service was assessed according to the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL model
Summary
Continuous improvement of service quality and sustainable development of higher educational institutions remain at the heart of any progress and/or development of any society. All higher educational institutions are invited to identify their stakeholders and manage their requests and interests in order to assess their role in society and to evaluate their service quality (Đonlagić & Fazlić, 2015). Defining stakeholders (clients) for universities is more difficult than defining clients in industry: students, government, academic staff, businesses, students’ families and society are all different clients for the educational system (Abdullah, 2006). Students’ role as stakeholder is essential in higher education. Given that the higher education sector faces strategic and economic challenges, namely accumulated competition and excellence in terms of quality of service (Felix, 2017; Kawshalya, 2016.).
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