The Quality of Academic Services to First-Year Engineering Students

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate student's satisfaction with academic services offered at a university of technology by measuring the gap between student's expectations of services and perceptions of the actual service provided and to identify the areas that need improvement. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among the first-year students who were admitted to a department in the faculty of engineering at the University of Technology in the Republic of South Africa. The sample was 39 students. The instrument comprised 25 questions assessing five dimensions of the academic services provided to students during teaching. The results indicate that students were not satisfied with the academic service quality in relation to all the dimensions in the SERVQUAL model. The study showed negative gaps for the five dimensions evaluated in academic service quality and compared to another study found the results similar. This could provide the management of the faculty with information about the aspects of academic service that promote more student satisfaction.