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Perception of Service Quality in Higher Education: Perspective of Iranian Students in Malaysian Universities
Authors: Amran Rasli , Ahmadreza Shekarchizadeh , Muhammad Jawad Iqbal
Number of views: 428
This article presents a gap analysis by measuring the perception and expectation of service quality in
higher education from the perspectives of Iranian postgraduate students. This article first tries to
understand the phenomenon for Iranian students to change their preference from studying in universities in
the West to those in the East, particularly Malaysia. In addition, this article seeks to assess their
perceptions of service quality in the new environment based on a modified service quality (SERVQUAL)
instrument to measure five constructs: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. After
conducting a pilot study, the instrument was administered to 163 Iranian postgraduates who were selected
based on stratified sampling on the top five public universities in Malaysia. The analysis started with
descriptive analysis followed by factor and reliability analyses. Single mean t-tests were then conducted to
assess the significance of the gaps based on all the 35 items of the modified SERVQUAL. The study
uncovered that all of the items and constructs measuring the gaps are significantly negative with empathy
representing the construct with the highest gap (-0.681), followed by reliability (-0.673), responsiveness
(-0.670), assurance (-0.612) and tangible (-0.601).