PERCEPTION AND EXPECTATION OF STUDENTS TOWARDS THE SERVICE QUALITY: PERSPECTIVE IN MALAYSIAN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

This study is aimed at evaluating the service quality in a research university in Malaysia by identifying and analyzing the probable gap between students’ perception and expectation. It began by an attempt to understand the needs of students towards the service quality provided by the university. In addition, this study looked at the relationship between all the five (5) dimensions of service quality in the new environment based on a modified service quality framework (SERVQUAL) -- tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy (independent variables) -- as the expectation and perception of the students with the overall quality of service (dependent variable). Besides, this study also seeks to rank the students’ satisfaction towards the existing supportive facilities and services provided by the university. After conducting a pilot test study, questionnaires were distributed to 480 students residing in all residential colleges in the case university. The analysis started with descriptive analysis followed by one sample t-test to assess the significance of the gaps based on all the 22 items of the modified SERVQUAL. This study revealed that all the means of the five dimensions for the perceptions were lower than the expectations between the ranges of 1.3 to 1.6. The highest gap was from the dimension of responsiveness where the gap value showed -1.6726. This was then followed with empathy and tangible with the gap value of -1.4851 and -1.3686, reliability with the gap value of -1.3310 and the last dimension assurance with the gap value of -1.3137. Moreover, the highest satisfaction facilities and services ranked by the students was the library which contributed 4.85 mean of satisfaction, while the lowest was the wireless internet (Wi-Fi) with the mean value of 2.55.