Abstract
Small private colleges provide an important service to society while operating in a dynamic and competitive environment. The inability to operate in a manner that delivers desirable levels of satisfaction to students can prove fatal, more so given the relatively small size of their student populations. So, for these colleges, student retention is a critical condiment of business success and so the pursuit of service quality becomes amplified. In acknowledgement of the subjective nature of service quality that makes service quality studies very context specific, this empirical study takes a quantitative research approach to investigate the extent of association, if any, between service quality dimensions, student satisfaction and student retention in the specific context of small private colleges in South Africa. Study findings indicate the existence of statistically-significant positive (though moderate) associations between dimensions of service quality and student satisfaction as well as between student satisfaction and student retention. Though results ought not to be generalized, the study’s findings nonetheless, bode useful lessons for small private colleges, if the quest for improved business performance, based on student retention, is to be realized.
Highlights
IntroductionThe service industry, the education sector, is increasingly recognising the importance of service quality which is leading to heightened efforts to meet the expectations of their students [1,2]
The service industry, the education sector, is increasingly recognising the importance of service quality which is leading to heightened efforts to meet the expectations of their students [1,2].After all, quality is a critical element of success for any organisation [3]
Regardless of the slight differences, the mean scores associated with the dimensions of service quality are all reflective of a favourable perception of the students as it pertains to the performance of their institutions with respect to the five service quality dimensions
Summary
The service industry, the education sector, is increasingly recognising the importance of service quality which is leading to heightened efforts to meet the expectations of their students [1,2]. Quality is a critical element of success for any organisation [3] This would possibly be more telling for small private colleges as rendering a quality service in the competitive environment in which they operate could be a vital element for success. It is perhaps to enhance the chances of continued survival of small private colleges, that it becomes imperative to explore avenues that may provide a competitive edge to the institution The fact that such small private colleges, already plagued by liabilities of size, are competing with larger and better established educational institutions in the private sector and with public colleges that are highly subsidized by the government, makes continued survival arduous.
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