Higher Education Quality and Student Satisfaction: Meta-Analysis, Subgroup Analysis and Meta-Regression

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a systematic literature review and meta-analysis carried out to identify various quality dimensions in higher education that contributes to student satisfaction. The results of heterogeneity generated from the meta-analysis were further explored via subgroup analysis and meta-regression. To fulfil these objectives, we summarized 122 qualitative studies and 40 quantitative studies that were relevant and important. Most of the included studies for meta-analysis ( N = 40) assessed the relationship between different quality dimensions in higher education institutions and student satisfaction. All six dimensions were found to be positively associated with the dependent variable (student satisfaction). Administrative service quality was found to have the highest correlation with student satisfaction, followed by student support quality, lecturer quality, teaching quality, curriculum quality, and physical evidence quality. The three categorical variables (student, university, and country) were included to test for moderation individually and collectively—these categorical variables, when taken together, moderates all the relationships except lecturer quality–student satisfaction. To our understanding, the current research will be the first one to examine the relationship between six higher education quality dimensions and student satisfaction based on a meta-analysis and meta-regression. The current analysis offers more novel details on the detection of significant moderating variables (type of student, type of university, and country of the study). These consolidated findings help us in identifying the existing state of literature, that is, what we consider and what we do not.