This chapter presents the summary of the findings, the conclusions drawn and the recommendations offered thereafter.
Summary
This study sought to find out the students’ satisfaction on the service quality provided by different colleges of the Thai Nguyen University for school year 2012- 2013. Specifically, it aimed to identify the respondents’ profile in terms of gender, age, origin, and monthly family income; determine the level of students’ satisfaction on service quality of the Colleges as to instructional, auxiliary, ancillary services and learning support facilities; find out the level of students’ satisfaction on service quality in colleges with respect to tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, and empathy; find out if there is any significant difference considering students’ profile in their perceptions of the service quality of different colleges of TNU; correlate students’ satisfaction in service quality of the different colleges of TNU to their demographic profiles; and propose a formation program to improve the service quality.
This study used the descriptive design in analyzing the investigated variables.
There were 382 students who were requested to answer checklist questionnaire. To ensure representative of samples, randomization was a suitable approach. To attain the respective sample size from the population, the researcher used cluster sampling strategies. The data in this study were collected, prepared or processed for analysis and then later actually analyzed; the collected data were categorized or coded and entered into computer using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS
version 16) for generation of summary of frequency tables. Collected data using the qualitative questions were processed manually. The actual data analysis universality level was based on relative frequencies or percentages from a frequency descriptive statistics. The EDUSERVQUAL tool is designed to measure gap between perceptions and expectations to service quality.
Findings
The study reveals the following findings:
1. Majority of respondents are females (59%), 21 years old (66%), live in the village (47.9%), and have monthly family income from 2,000,000 VND and below (43.5%).
2. Students identify that the significant gaps between perceived importance of service quality and their actual experience are lower than expected. Largest gaps are reported in the areas of “wifi network and internet service quality” (-0.95); “soft skills equipped for the students” (-0.87); “audio visual/media center functions well” (-0.86);
“sincerity and interest of college to solve students’ problems” (-0.84); “college giving an individual attention” (-0.83); “available food services guaranteed by food safety standards” (-0.82); “available book store and market” (-0.8); “college integrity to what is promised” (-0.8).
3. Gender and monthly family income have significant correlation with that of students’ perceptions since 12 out of 43 items (factors) in EDUSERVQUAL tool are significantly correlated with gender and 10 out of 43 items (factors) are significantly correlated with monthly family income.
4. There are significant differences in student’s perception of nine colleges on instructional (IN) and ancillary services (AN), learning support facilities (LE), tangibles
(TA), responsiveness (RE), reliability (R), assurance (A), and empathy (EM), but there are no significant differences in student’s perception of 9 colleges on auxiliary services (AU). Moreover, important determinants of students’ satisfaction are instructional services, empathy, reliability, auxiliary and ancillary services, and learning support facilities.
5. The results of the descriptive analysis for demographic information indicated that among the analyzed samples, 88.4% of the DTE’s respondents agree and strongly agree with their college’s services, followed by DTS’s respondents (87.2%), then DTU’s respondents (82.5%), DTZ’s respondents (78%), DTK’s respondents (70.7%), DTN’s respondents (66.6%), DTK’s respondents (66.0%), DTC’s respondents (58.8%) and DTF’s respondents (36.8%).
6. A formation program has been proposed to improve the service quality.
Conclusions
Based on the findings, the following conclusions were drawn:
1. Most of the students of Thai Nguyen University are women, coming from the rural areas, relatively young, and are low income-earners.
2. The students in general are satisfied with the service quality provided by the colleges of the Thai Nguyen University; however, some of the dimensions and factors related to service quality should still be improved in the future.
3. It is quite evident that service quality has significant positive relationship with students’ satisfaction. Hence, students’ satisfaction can be increased by improving service quality.
Recommendations
Based on the conclusions, the following recommendations are offered:
1. Similar studies may be conducted across public and private institutions of higher education in the country to establish competitive benchmarks, to track poor service delivery and promote students’ satisfaction on service quality measurement in all colleges/universities in Vietnam.
2. The EDUSERVQUAL tool may be used to further investigate perceptions and expectations held by the administrative staff, faculty and students’ families in colleges of Thai Nguyen University.
3. School policies for the betterment of service quality may be formulated to encourage individuals and organizations to invest in training programs.
4. A comprehensive study may be conducted to help administrators, faculty and colleges to review the overall service quality in the HE sector.
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