STUDENTS’ SATISFACTION ON THE SERVCES RENDERED

BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CAGAYAN VALLEY

Introduction

A university is an institution of higher education which

grants academic degrees in various subjects or courses.

Universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

Nowadays, there are a lot of universities around the world

including Philippines. In the Philippines, there are a lot of

universities either public universities or private universities.

Public universities in our country are funded by the Government

and are governed as self-managed institutions. Private

universities are universities not operated by the governments

but they may be subjected to government regulations like the

University of Cagayan Valley

Universities offer many courses to be selected by students

such as Engineering, Business Study, Medical, Agriculture and

more. Students have to submit their application to the

university or any official third party. Based on the student’s

academic qualification and other related criteria, students will

be selected by the university. Universities are very important

to the development of the country because universities provide

tertiary education to produce an educated generation. An

educated generation can ensure success and betterment of the

country.

In the higher education, students are the customers to the

university. Higher educational organisation should ensure

students’ satisfaction. In higher education, services quality is

important as well for student satisfaction as customer. Ahmed

and Nawaz (2010), mentioned that service quality is a key

performance measure in educational excellence and is the main

strategic variable for universities to create a strong

perception in consumer’s mind. Other than that, service quality

has been examined to measure customers’ satisfaction (Lassar,

Manolis and Winsor, 2000; Abu Hasan, 2008; Khodayari and

Khodayari, 2011).

The importance of both service quality (SQ) and customer

satisfaction (CS) has received considerable attention in the

recent years (Ibanez, Hartman and Calvo, 2006; Sureshchandar,

Rajendran, and Anantharaman, 2002). According to Stanton William

J., Etzel Michael J., and Walker Bruce J. (1994), a customer is

the individual or organization that actually makes a purchase

decision, while a consumer is the individual or organizational

unit that uses or consumes a product.

Students’ satisfaction in higher educational institutions

can keep their institutions in a good image and also deliver

satisfaction is an important tool for a successful university.

In addition, customers’ satisfaction also has relationship with

customers’ loyalties. Machleit and Mantel (2001), described

customers’ satisfaction as the heart of all marketing activities

and there is no doubt that customers’ satisfaction has been

identified as one of the most important determinants to

customers’ loyalty. In higher education, if students are

satisfied with the service quality that was provided by the

university then the university will get the students’ loyalty.

Students are willing to further their studies again in the same

university.

From the customers’ satisfaction and customers’ loyalty,

competitive advantage can be maintained by the organisation. It

is of great importance that the teaching quality is

significantly high, since competition to attract, maintain and

foster students amongst universities are fierce today (Abu

Hasan, 2008). Understanding student satisfaction is critical to

educational institutions as it provides inputs towards

developing better tools to reach the students. Telford and

Masson indicate that satisfaction in higher educational

institutions is considered a measure of effectiveness in the

sense that universities that are successful in providing a

desirable service tend to adopt satisfaction as their strategic

educational success depends on the efforts from the students as

well as the universities. These views indicate that the

educational institutions need to develop effective ways to

identify and understand student satisfaction if they want to be

successful, and that it has to be a continuous process.

Studies (Alridge and Rowley, Athiyaman, and Wiers-Jenssen

et al.,) agree that understanding and measuring student

satisfaction relates to a set of indicators that covers a

student’s life and this involves two loosely bound categories,

evaluating teaching and learning and also looking into total

student experiences. Elliot and Shin state that focusing on

student satisfaction enables universities to re-engineer their

organizations to adapt to students’ needs and at the same time

create a system towards continuous monitoring of the

effectiveness of meeting or exceeding their needs. They are also

of the opinion that student satisfaction provides an avenue

through which a competitive advantage can be achieved in

educational institutions.

“Delighting the customer‟ is the core message of the total

quality approach (Owlia and Aspinwall). Higher education tends

to care about student satisfaction because of its potential

impact on student motivation, retention, recruitment efforts,

university” (Huang). As per Seymour, developing satisfied

student should be a primary goal of higher education. Developing

customer (student) satisfaction at universities level is

crucial. If this is achieved, it will facilitate the strategic

objectives of the university more effectively.

Students are the direct recipients of the service provided

by the university. University should focus the services to

students because as a direct customer they receive the service

directly from the university program. The objective of any

university is to maximize student satisfaction, minimize

dissatisfaction and therefore this in turn to improve the

institutions performance. The improvement of the services

provided by university can be achieved by getting feedbacks,

comments, complaints or objections from the students as a

customer. From the positive or negative feedback, the university

have a better view of the strengths and weaknesses of its

services so that improvement can be made wherever necessary.

This can be carried out continuously to gain better relationship

to the students as a whole.

University of Cagayan Valley is not only competing with the

local universities here at Tuguegarao but also many other

universities in whole Region II. Considering the whole world as

say there is an intense competition. Student satisfaction plays

a crucial role for the success of a university. As argued by

Berry, service is one of the important factors enhancing value,

and can positively influence a college’s success.

In relation, the researchers chose this study to measure

the satisfaction level of the students on the services in the

University of Cagayan Valley. Researchers believe that through

assessment of the existing framework, areas for further

improvement, needs of the students, and the appropriate

response, they would be able to contribute to the enhancement of

the quality of service in view of meeting the goal of

educational competency of UCV, because in order to establish as

a baseline standard of performance and a possible standard of

excellence, UCV should put the interests of the students at the

forefront. Everyone must be very particular and sensitive to the

needs of each student. Through making the students feel

satisfied to all the services being given to them is something

enormous achievement for the university because it is a remark

of commitment to quality education

The objective of the research is to measure the level of

students’ satisfaction on the services and to propose action to

enhance/improve the services rendered by the registrar, cashier,

Cagayan Valley.
Conceptual Framework

This section will discuss the conceptual framework for

examining the level of students’ satisfaction on the services

delivered in the University of Cagayan Valley. Harvey recognizes

the predominant satisfaction surveys cover five areas: 1)

institutions (university level), 2) faculties, 3) departments,

4) courses and 5) teacher-appraisal by students. Taking previous

research (Feldman and Theiss, Rich et al., Marsh, Donald and

Denison, Guolla, Morrison, Lee et al., Harvey, most universities

around the world conduct satisfaction surveys among the students

regarding the services they provide.

In relation, the researchers is choosing this study to

measure the level of students’ satisfaction on the services

rendered by the registrar, cashier, library and security

services in the University of Cagayn Valley. The researchers

believe that through assessment of the existing framework and

instruments, areas for further improvement, needs of the

students, and the appropriate response, they would be able to

contribute to the enhancement of the quality of service in view

of meeting the goal of educational competency of University of

Cagayan Valley.