Strengthening the university competitiveness in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The number of students at Czech universities had been growing continuously until 2010. In 2010, almost 400,000 students studied there. Since then, this number has declined every year. Pressure on present-day universities has been accruing due to the competitive environment. The only way to strengthen competitiveness is to improve constantly the quality and image. The objective of this paper is to verify what factors are important for students regarding their satisfaction and what factors could be key for supporting the competitiveness of the Czech universities. To assess student satisfaction, the authors conducted a questionnaire survey where students were asked to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the faculty. The survey was carried out within the Faculty of Business and Economics of Mendel University in Brno (FBE MENDELU) and a selected private university in Brno in 2019. Relative frequencies were used in data processing and statistical hypotheses were tested. In addition to the basic classification according to one feature, a combination classification was also processed, and the independence was tested for different combinations of questions. Of the total number (1,020) of identified strengths at FBE MENDELU, 57.7% of students stated, “quality teachers”, 32.4% “faculty image” and 31.8% “modern environment” as strengths. Regarding the identified weaknesses, the most frequently mentioned were “study difficulty (42.4%),” weaker image of the university with the public “(31.5%) and not enough practical training (23.2%). At the private college, 47.8% of respondents cited “quality teachers”, “interesting lectures and teaching methods” (40.8%) and “study materials for subjects” (29.4%) as the school’s strengths. Received: 16 April 2021Accepted: 23 October 2021