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An Assesment of Students’ Perception of Service Quality in Nigerian Higher Educational Institutions

Article Citation: Ibrahim Yaro (2020). An Assesment of Students’ Perception of Service Quality in Nigerian Higher Educational Institutions. DEGEL: The Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Islamic Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1. ISSN 0794-9316

AN ASSESMENT OF STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF SERVICE QUALITY IN NIGERIAN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

By

Ibrahim Yaro

Abstract

Higher educational institutions in both developed and developing countries aspire to achieve academic excellence. This is imperative as the educational environment is constantly changing and the demand for excellence in education is on the rise. There is, therefore, the need for quality service delivery. Although there are many problems bedeviling education in Nigeria including inadequate quality teachers and the lack of professionalism to adequately manage them, poor quality of graduates produced, inadequate funding and many more. The purpose of this study is to ascertain student’s perceptions of service quality in higher education. Quantitative data was collected using the SERVQUAL (service quality) instrument. Descriptive statistics was used in analyzing the data with 103 final year students as samples for the study during the 2018/2019 academic session. Questionnaire was also used as instrument of data collection in which all the items used have Cronbach’s alpha greater than 0.5. The results showed that the students have a high perception of empathy, school facilities, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and discipline. Meaning that the students have higher perception of service quality. In essence, this depicted that the staff concerned in particular, and the school management at large, are doing their best in discharging their duties and responsibilities. It is therefore, recommended that the school management should emphasize on human resource development and motivation. This is because helping staff to develop their career as well as motivating them, is very vital. This will boost their morale towards ensuring effective service quality delivery. With this, the goals of education could be achieved.

Introduction

It is clear that higher educational institutions in both developed and developing countries aspire towards achieving academic excellence. As a result of this, such institutions focus on quality service delivery in order to expedite implementation of education policies towards achieving the educational policy goals of attaining academic excellence (Prabha & Pushpa, 2010). Olalekan and Ajayi (2018) noted that higher educational institutions in Nigeria, made tremendous efforts towards national development. It is therefore, imperative to have quality assessment of these institutions so as to avoid the degradation of education quality. As communities dedicated for the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge; that are also committed to the study and clarification of values, as well as, to the development of the society they serve, the economic development of a country mostly depends on the education quality of its higher educational institutions (Islam, 2007). The Task Force on Higher Education and Society (2000) has concluded that “without more and better higher education (HE), developing countries will find it increasingly difficult to benefit from the global knowledge-based economy.” Assessing the service quality of these institutions will help in no small measure towards achieving the goals of education.

In the Nigerian context, Section 1 of the 6th edition of the National Policy on Education outlined that the goals of education in Nigeria are:

a.  The development of the individual into morally sound, patriotic and effective citizen

b.  Total integration of the individual into the community, the Nigerian society and the world.

c.  Provision of equal access to qualitative educational opportunities for all citizens at all levels of education (primary, secondary and tertiary) within and outside the formal education system.

d.  Inculcating national consciousness, values and national unity.

e.  Development of appropriate skills, mental, physical and social abilities and competencies and empower the individual to live in and contribute positively to the society (National Policy on Education, 2013, p.2).

To ensure the attainment of the stated educational goals of education in Nigeria, there is the need for service quality. Evans and Thaddeus (2017) pointed out that service quality in higher education has a significant influence on student satisfaction and therefore, higher education institutions should put in place mechanisms to collect student feedback to enable them to determine the service quality dimensions of interest to their students so that they can make the necessary improvements on the relevant service quality dimensions. Because students are regarded as the most valuable asset of any successful higher education institutions (HEIs) (Nell and Cant, 2014). It is thus imperative to assess student’s perceptions of service quality as it leads to customer (students) satisfaction and loyalty as well as building the image of the school (Bloemer et al., 1998; Ghobadian et al., 1994; Gronroos, 1984). This portrays that educational institutions that provide improved quality services on a continuous basis are believed to have the confidence and satisfaction of both staff and students. Because excellent service delivery is capable of restoring customer’s loyalty and at the same time attracting new ones. It also resulted in reducing cost of governance and enhancing the image of the organization which in the long run improves effectiveness (Stodnick & Rogers, 2008; Rust & Zahorik, 1993; Kang & James, 2004; Yoon & Suh, 2004).

The perceptions of the recipients of the services are thus, of paramount importance. According to Ekinci and Dawes (2009) and Kuşluvan et al. (2010), stakeholders’ perceptions with regards to service quality varies and this is due to the fact that in most cases those who deliver services have a higher perceptions of the service delivery than the recipients of the services. The variation in the perceptions may however be due to several reasons. For instance, the service providers (managers and employees) most often do not like to mention their lapses in service delivery. In other words, they do not want to relegate the work and services delivered by them (Grandey, 2000).

Problem Statement

There are indeed a lot of problems bedeviling education sector in Nigeria. For instance, despite government efforts and the fact that education is considered by the United Nations to be a public good of which no child should be deprived (Dorothy, 2009), the quality of graduates produced in Nigeria is still very poor (Yaro, Rozita, & Dani, 2017). There is also the issue of inefficiency and lack of professionalism to manage human resources (Akinwale, 2014; Abdullahi, 2013), lack of quality teachers (Chong, 2014) and inadequate funding (Peter & Isaac, 2013) among others. In order to curtail these challenges hindering the achievement of the goals of education, there is the need for quality service delivery. For this reason, this study focus on assessing student’s perceptions of service quality in a Nigerian higher educational institution. The imperativeness of this is that provision of effective service quality in educational institutions, required understanding the needs and expectations of students (Shobha, 2015). Because it is the overall judgment or opinion of the customers/recipients about their satisfaction or otherwise of the services rendered. This also help in achieving the goals of education.

Theoretical and empirical underpinnings on service quality in higher educational institutions as revealed in the extant literature portrayed mixed findings and incoherent conclusions. For instance; Ahmed and Naresh (2018) found positive but weak relationship of student’s perceptions as compared to their expectations. Khanchitpol (2014) examined service quality in higher institutions of Thailand and found out that the tangible dimension including facilities needs improvement. Stephen and John (2015) also made a comparative analysis in terms of service quality in private and public educational institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and found high service quality in private institutions compared to their public counterparts. Other studies such as Paul (2014), Muhammad et al., (2012), Figen and Rebecca (2013), Muhammad et al., (2010), Hishamuddin et al., (2012) have found a high students perception on the services rendered. Whereas studies such as Alpha et al., (2015), Faranak and Benhaz (2011) found a negative student’s perceptions of the services rendered.

Added to these incoherent conclusions, this study argues that there is need to replicate a similar study in the Nigerian context, which to the best of the knowledge of the researcher, none of such studies focus on service quality in any institution of higher learning in Nigeria. This study thus filled this gap by examining student’s perception of service quality in a Nigerian higher institution with a view to determining whether the students are satisfied with the quality of services rendered or otherwise with particular reference to Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. This is because ascertaining the grey areas will enable the university management to rectify the identified lapses towards achieving academic excellence. This is why Lijijana (2014) stressed that service quality is one of the important aspects that universities should provide.

Literature Review

The Concept of Service Quality

Service quality has received a great deal of attention from both academics and practitioners (Negi, 2009) and services marketing literature. Service quality is defined as the overall assessment of a service by the customer (Eshghi, Roy & Gangulli, 2008). Ghylin et al., (2006) points out that, by defining service quality, companies will be able to deliver services with higher quality level presumably resulting in increased customer satisfaction. Understanding service quality must involve acknowledging the characteristics of service which are intangibility, heterogeneity and inseparability, (Ladhari, 2009). In that way, service quality would be easily measured.

The customer’s total perception of a service is based on his/her perception of the outcome and the process; the outcome is either value added or quality and the process is the role undertaken by the customer (Edvardsson, 1998). Service quality is considered an important tool for a firm’s struggle to differentiate itself from its competitors (Ladhari, 2009). The relevance of service quality to companies is emphasized for the fact that it offers a competitive advantage to companies that strive to improve it and hence bring customer satisfaction. Negi (2009) suggested that customer-perceived service quality has been given increased attention in recent years, due to its specific contribution to business competitiveness and developing satisfied customers. This makes service quality a very important construct to understand by firms by knowing how to measure it and making necessary improvements in its dimensions where appropriate.

Service Quality in the Education Sector

The aspect of service quality relating to the teaching and learning factors, as well as, the environmental attributes influencing higher education, has been explored since the early 1990s (Harrop and Douglas, 1996; Narasimhan, 1997; Barnes, 2007). Also, majority of such studies used student evaluations to measure quality in higher education (Rowley, 1997; Aldridge & Rowley, 1998; LaBay & Comm, 2003; Barnes, 2007). Indeed service quality research in education has been largely influenced by the work of Zeithaml et al. (1990) based on the SERVQUAL (service quality) model. In the education sector for instance, service quality enables meeting teacher’s and student’s needs at the same time it accord the school management the confidence of achieving its goals (Bloemer et al., 1998). Because the information received from the experience of customers (students and teachers) helps in no small measure in developing external benchmarking program with a view to improve quality service delivery (Smith, 2000).

From Berry et al. (1988)’s view point, service quality depicts the comparison between customer’s expectations in terms of service delivery with the performance after offering such services. According to Zeithaml and Bitner (2000) service quality is the lasting rational appraisal of business service offerings by customers. Brysland and Curry (2001) noted that service quality is about providing something intangible in a way that pleases the consumer and that preferably gives some value to consumers. According to Johnson and Winchell (1988), service quality could be defined as the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. This is why according to Stephen and John (2015), service quality is currently been incorporated in strategic planning of formal education in most African countries as a result of the need for achieving international economic integration. The authors further stated that quality education should be in conformity with the requirements and objectives of main stakeholders (i.e. students, parents, employers, community and the government). For this reason, stakeholder’s perceptions of the services rendered is of vital importance. Thus, service quality is critically important in providing a competitive advantage to a service industry or a company, as it is influential on various factors such as customer satisfaction (Amin et al.,2013), customer loyalty (Kim et al., 2013; Prentice, 2013), intentions (Hooper et al., 2013; Srivastava and Sharma, 2013) and value perceptions (Wu, 2013).

Indeed service quality in higher education is aimed at achieving educational policy goals; and for any policy to achieve goal and have impact on the citizenry, it must be implementable. It follows therefore that implementation is of paramount importance. Bunyi (2015) stated that “it is not quality alone that matters but quality service delivery”. Because where there is quality service delivery in education, there would be quality outcome and this will eventually leads to the realization of the educational policy goals.

Subsequently, quality learners would be produced who would end up as useful members within the society. Against this background, Elmore, (1978; 1997) stressed that to have effective implementation there should be bureaucratic capacity, financial resources and accountability. This in essence indicates that higher educational institutions especially in Nigeria should have the capacity and strength of employing the right caliber of staff that are able to deliver on the job. In addition to this, the required instructional materials and infrastructure needed for conducive learning should be made available. Again teachers should be accountable by being diligent in the discharge of their duties and responsibilities. These will definitely ensure effective service delivery towards the realization of educational policy goals in Nigerian higher educational institutions.

Higher Educational Institutions in Nigeria

Higher education or tertiary education is the education received after secondary education. It is the facilitator and driven force for a sound social, economic, political and cultural as well as industrial development of a country been it a fundamental mechanism for harnessing the wealth of a nation (Peretomode, 2007). To curtail the many social vices bedeviling societies and achieve progress and development, there is the need for sound higher education because it acquaint individuals with knowledge of how to be useful members in the society (National Policy on Education, 2004).

In Nigeria, the first Tertiary Institution was the Yaba Higher College, established in 1934. This became the nucleus of the first University College established in 1948 in Ibadan. As time goes on, the need for higher educational institutions increases and thus immediately after independence in 1960, more universities were established. These includes University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1960, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, University of Lagos and the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University); all in 1962. The University of Benin was established in 1970. These are called the first generation Universities. In 1975 more states were created and thus the demand for more universities. This necessitate the Federal government to establish seven additional universities namely; Universities of Jos, Maiduguri, Sokoto, Ilorin, Calabar, Port Harcourt and Bayero University, Kano which are referred to as the second generation Universities. Between 1980 and 1990, more universities were again created. These are the Federal University of Technology in Owerri, Markurdi, Yola, Akure, and Bauchi. These universities are known as the third generation universities. State governments were also empowered to create state universities at that time. There is also another set of universities called the fourth generation Universities. These are universities that came into being from 1991 to what obtain at present. These include several private Universities, Nigerian Open University and other State universities.

Nigeria has a large number of higher educational institutions. Currently, Nigeria has a total of 153 Universities. This comprises of 40 Federal universities, 45 State universities, and 68 Private universities (Premium Times, 2020). Eggins (2010) observed that it is now accepted that tertiary education has important implications for the economic, political, and socio-cultural development, sustainability and global competitiveness of nations. To achieve these greatness however, there is the need for service quality in higher educational institutions especially in Nigeria.

The Service Quality Model (SERVQUAL)

The service quality model (SERVQUAL) is currently used in most organizations to evaluate service quality irrespective of the nature of the services provided (Zeithaml, et al., 1990). It is most often used in the service industry, education sector inclusive, and has earned great popularity and wide application due to its ease of use and the capability of making generalization (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988; Zeithaml, et al., 1990). The service quality (SERVQUAL) model has been found to be a useful tool for understanding the notion of service quality, as defined by the customer. This is why it is used in this study.

The original service quality (SERVQUAL) model comprised of ten determinant service factors, which following extensive statistical analysis in 1988 revealed significant correlations between several of the factors as the ten service factors collapsed into five. The five suggested service quality dimensions are tangibles/school facilities, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and discipline and empathy, (Parasuraman et al., 1988).

i.Tangibles/School facilities: includes physical facilities, equipment and appearance of the personnel. This in essence refers to the facilities such as the furniture, laboratories, the conducive learning equipment (communication materials) such as the public address gadgets used in classes, the classes itself, spaciousness, functionality etc. etc.

ii.Reliability: Refers to the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. This means the ability of the teachers/lecturers to deliver successfully not only in classes but in other academic activities in which they have to deal with the students. It makes reference to elements that intervene in the training process, contents, academic services, curriculum structure or schedules.

iii.Responsiveness: means willingness to help and provide prompt service. In this instance, the ability of the teachers/lecturers to always be there for the students when the need arise. In essence it means the readiness to help and provide prompt service and agility in common processes and attention to incidents. As well as the speed and quality response from the higher education institution.

iv.Assurance and discipline: Refers to the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire confidence. This means professionalism, staff accomplishment of assigned tasks. It also includes teaching capacity, ability to convey trust and confidence. It considers attributes such as having positive attitude, communication skills, allowing sufficient consultation and being able to provide regular feedback to students.

v.Empathy: Refers to caring and individualized attention the school provides its students. This include the capacity of the higher educational institution to understand student needs and ability to give response to them and to the social demands. This factor relates to the provision of individualized, caring and personalized attention to students with a clear understanding of their specific and growing needs, while keeping their best interest at heart.

Theoretical Framework

This research adopts the stakeholder theory by Freeman (1984). The major principle of the stakeholder theory is that of taking into cognizance the competing interest of the stakeholders with respect to issue/s under consideration. Education stakeholders are many and each try to see that quality output is ensured. There are those that can influence the outcome of a particular education policy (Crosby, 1992; Mason & Mitroff, 1981; Walt (1994) and those that have vested interest in education (Adebayo, 2013). There is another category of stakeholders called advocacy group. These are stakeholders that are concerned or affected by a policy and most often participate in policy implementation process. The advocacy groups usually emerged from within public and private sector organization and work collaboratively in order to supervise the implementation process with a view to achieving policy objectives.

Freeman (1984), outlined that stakeholders are individuals or groups that are directly affected or can affect the realization of organizational objectives. This include such individuals or groups that stand the risk of being affected by the outcome of policies or those with the capacity of affecting the outcome of such policies even if they did not act directly. As Adebayo (2013) pointed out, education stakeholders are mostly interested in seeing quality output towards achieving academic excellence. In the Nigerian context, despite the fact that students of higher educational institutions doesn’t have a hand directly in influencing policy goals, they have vested interest in education. Also their perception of government’s education policies can improve the workings of the government because they are also affected by the outcome of such policies. Their perceptions of service quality is thus very vital.

Methodology

Quantitative method using service quality (SERVQUAL) instrument was used. Descriptive statistics was also used in analyzing the data obtained from the sample of the study.

Population and Sample

The population of this study is 140 final year students of the Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences, Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto during 2018/2019 Academic Session. The choice of these set of students was informed by the fact that focusing on a single set of respondents that can provide the necessary information is better than obtaining the information from several or multiple set of respondents (Delbrio et al., 2007).

To determine the sample size, the research used the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) table for determining the sample size. As outlined in the table, if the population of a study is 140, the corresponding sample size will be 103.The sample size of the study is therefore, 103.

Instrumentation

Questionnaire was employed as instrument of data collection using a 6 point Likert measurement scale. This scale was chosen because it increases reliability and has the ability of decreasing social desirability bias (Krosnick, 1999).

Reliability

To ensure reliability of the constructs, factor analysis was applied in which the Cronbach’s Alpha of the constructs were determined (Hair et al., 2007, 2010; Bhattacherjee, 2012; Pallant, 2010). The Cronbach’s Alpha ranges from 0.55 - 0.80, thus signifying an acceptable reliability. KMO values also ranges from 0.63 – 0.74 for all the constructs; thus indicating an acceptable values of 0.50 and above (Hair et al. 2010; Tabachnick & Fidel, 2001) as indicated in Table 1.

 Table 1: Results of the Reliability Test

Construct

KMO

Cronbach’s

Alpha

Empathy

0.73

0.79

School Facilities

0.68

0.75

Reliability

0.63

0.80

Responsiveness

0.74

0.77

Assurance and

Discipline

0.63

0.55

 Source: Field work, 2019

Results and Discussion

This section of the study presents the analysis of data obtained from the field and same equally discussed the findings and the conclusion arrived at. The section will begin with demographic analysis, response rate and descriptive analysis.

Demographic Analysis

The total number of respondents are 103. Out of which 70 respondents representing 68% are males; the remaining 33 respondents representing 32% are females. This indicates that majority of the final year students of the department are males. Also it was shown that 90 respondents representing 87% are within the age group of 20 to 29 years while the remaining 13 respondents representing 13% are between the ages of 30 to 39 as displayed in Table 2.

Overall, this depicted that majority of the respondents fall under the male gender; also majority of them fall within the age range of between 20 to 29 years old. This showed a wide gap between male and female students enrolment in tertiary education especially in the Department of public administration of the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. Added to this, there is an indication of large enrolment of students into the university immediately after secondary school education as portrayed by the age range of the students. Because the age range of 87% of them is between twenty to twenty nine years old.

 Table 2 Demographic Analysis

 

Respondents Profile

 

Frequency

 

Percentage (%)

Gender

Male

70

68

Female

Total

33

103

32

100%

Age Group (years)

20 – 29

90

87

30 – 39

13

13

Total

103

100%

 Source: Field work, 2019

Response Rate

A total of one hundred and three (103) questionnaires were distributed to the respondents and all the questionnaires were filled and returned. However all the returned questionnaires were usable; a response rate of 100% was therefore achieved. This signifies that generalization could be made. Creswell (2012) opined that a response rate of 50% and above is adequate enough to be considered for analysis out of which generalization could be made. Response rate is indicated in Table 3

Table 3 Response Rate

Questionnaires distributed

103

Questionnaires returned

103

Usable questionnaires

103

Response rate

100%

Effective response rate

100%

Source: Field work, 2019.

Descriptive Analysis

This section is primarily concerned with the descriptive analysis of the variables used. Descriptive statistics in the form of means and standard deviations for the latent variables were computed. All the latent variables used in the present study were measured using a six-point scale anchored by 1– Strongly Disagree, 2– Disagree, 3– Slightly Disagree, 4– Slightly Agree 5– Agree, 6– Strongly Agree. For easier interpretation, the six-point scale used in the present study was classified into three categories, namely, low, moderate and high. Scores of less than 2 (3/3 + lowest value 1 is considered as low; scores of 5 and above (highest value 6 - 3/3) is considered high, while those between low and high scores (between 2 and 5) are considered moderate (Sassenberg, Marschke, & Scholl, 2011).

 Table 4 Descriptive Analysis

Construct

Number of

 Items

Mean

SD

Empathy

4

16.2

4.6

School Facilities

5

16.8

5.7

Reliability

4

32.04

7.7

Responsiveness

4

15.73

4.69

Assurance & Discipline

5

21.76

4.09

 Source: Field work, 2019

The computation in Table 4 shows that the overall mean for the latent variables ranged between 15.73 and 32.04. While the overall standard deviation of the latent variables ranged between 4.09 and 7.7.The mean and standard deviation for the Empathy were 16.2 and 4.6, respectively. This suggests that respondents tended to have high level of perception of empathy. Also, the mean score for the school facilities stands at 16.8, with a standard deviation of 5.7. This indicates that the respondents have a high level perception of the school facilities. Going further, the results showed that the respondents have a high perception of reliability with a mean score of 32.04 and a standard deviation of 7.7. There is also a high perception for responsiveness as the mean score and standard deviation are 15.73 and 4.69, respectively. In the end, the result similarly indicated a high student’s perception on assurance and discipline with a mean score of 21.76 and standard deviation of 4.09.

Discussion on the findings

The findings showed that the students have a higher perception of service quality in all the dimensions of the service quality used in the study i.e. empathy, school facilities, responsiveness, reliability, and assurance and discipline. As argued by Lijijana (2014), service quality is one of the important aspects that universities should provide. It is thus not surprising that the students are excelling year in year out due to the quality of the services rendered by the staff and the university management. It is also an indication that the provision of service quality in a higher educational institution is of vital importance as students are the most valuable assets in a higher educational institution (Nell and Cant, 2014). Thus, students’ perceptions or views on service quality can go a long way in rectifying the lapses where they exists with regards to the level of services rendered. Even though Nigeria as a country is facing many economic, political, social and cultural challenges, coupled with the fact that most Nigerian universities are facing one problem or the other, the provision of service quality will help in no small measure in curtailing the many challenges including social vices in the country. Because provision of sound education through quality service delivery helps in shaping individual’s character towards a better society which is also one of the goals that higher educational institutions in Nigeria intends to achieve.

Conclusion

An analysis of the results indicated that the students have a higher perception of service quality. This showed that the lecturers in particular and the school management at large are doing their best in order to see that they discharge their duties and responsibilities diligently. Service quality is indeed one of the aspects that universities should focus on. It is imperative however, to note that students as stakeholders in education has vested interest in it.

Recommendations

Based on the findings from the analysis made so far, it is recommended that:

i.The University management needs to do more to improve on all the aspects of service quality even though the students have a higher perceptions of all the dimensions of service quality used in the study. This is with a view to retain the confidence and loyalty of both staff and students. Again, this will also lead to achieving the goals of education in the Nigerian higher education system i.e. training individuals to be useful members of the society as outlined in the Nigerian national education policy.

ii.In my view, the school management should emphasize on human resource development and motivation. By this, I mean the University management should emphasize on training its staff (the lecturers) to acquire additional knowledge and expertise. This is aimed at boosting their morale towards provision of more effective and quality services.

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