The Evaluation of Service Quality for Higher Education in Taiwan by Using Importance-Satisfaction Model

Abstract

Due to the government’s education policy significantly change in higher education, number of new universities has established dramatically in the past decades in Taiwan. As a result, the universities are facing the strongly competitive pressures. Most of the universities adjust their strategy in improving service quality to enhance their competition among the universities. Usually they used the customer satisfaction survey to ensure the actual service quality from student’s perspectives, and then find out the service items or quality attributes with low satisfaction levels as the items to be improved. Then they will adjust and response to those items which need to be enhanced or improved furthermore to improve their overall service quality and attributes. Several studies assert that only using the satisfaction survey and the related improvement actions may not be obtained the significant results in improving service quality. The main cause is that the improvement items may not concerned by student. Usually the student will concern the service context and quality attributes with high importance. Therefore, we consider the famous I-S model and the related questionnaire to evaluate the service quality for university. We have conducted this model and the related questionnaire survey in a private university in Taiwan. According to I-S model analysis, the results of this research survey show the main pole to be improved (high importance and low satisfaction), including equipment, facilities need to be replaced or upgraded. The survey results will be improved subsequently as further reference for improvement.