Measuring Higher Education Service Quality During COVID-19 Pandemic in China using a SERVQUAL Method

Abstract

There has been an emergency teaching and learning paradigm shift in China universities due to the closure of many higher educational institutions due to COVID-19. This study examines the education service quality during the pandemic. Five dimensions of SERVQUAL have been studied, namely tangible, dependability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. Using a simple random sampling method, self-report questionnaires were distributed to undergraduate students from the Tianfu College of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE), who participated in this study. This resulted in 373 usable questionnaires. In all five dimensions of service quality, a gap was observed between students’ perceptions and expectations, and are listed in ascending order as follows: tangible: -0.073, assurance: 0.015, empathy: 0.050, responsiveness: 0.052, and reliability: 0.056. The gap analysis between service quality perceptions and expectations showed that all scores for perceptions were higher than expected, except for the tangible dimension. Nevertheless, the negative gap is small and negligible. This finding indicates that the service quality of tangible dimension could be slightly improved. Specifically, the university must upgrade facilities and equipment to improve the fluency of the teaching network, and skills of teachers should be improved to advance their teaching methods, in order to support online teaching and learning, which could reduce the gap of service quality of tangible dimension between student perceptions and expectations.