Identification and Analysis of Dental Education Quality in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Objectives: Saudization can be defined as recruiting and hiring Saudis in both the governmental and private sectors. This process is being introduced by the Ministry of Labor to reduce the number of unemployed. Lowering the unemployment rate from 11.6% to 7% is one of the new vision goals to be reached by 2030. The SERVQUAL model is used to assess customer perceptions of service quality in service and retail organizations through five dimensions: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. This study aims to measure the effect of these quality dimensions on students' willingness to be and satisfaction being educated by Saudi faculty in dental colleges. The focus of this research is to determine which quality dimensions most affect students while being educated by Saudi faculty in dental colleges. The contribution of this research will help future research to develop strategic operational objectives to enhance education quality. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was performed. A total of 432 participants (198 male students and 234 female students) were included in the study. An electronic questionnaire with a scale from 0 to 5 using the SERVQUAL model was formulated. Results: The results were analyzed by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (SPSS, version 21, Chicago, Illinois, USA). The weighted scale was 4.01, 4.12, 4.03, 3.25, and 3.78 for reliability, assurance, accountability, empathy, and education quality of Saudi faculty, respectively. Furthermore, the weighted scale was 3.7 and 3.71 for students' satisfaction and student willingness to attend future lectures, respectively. Conclusion: Students had high agreement with the reliability, accountability, and education quality of Saudi dental faculty. However, the assurance dimension showed significant side effects on student willingness to attend future lectures. On the other hand, the empathy dimension showed significant side effects on participants' perception of satisfaction and student willingness to attend future lectures.