QUALITY ENHANCEMENT THROUGH DETERMINING THE GAP BETWEEN THE EXPECTATIONS AND PERCEPTIONS OF STUDENTS: eMPIRICA COLLEGE CASE STUDY

Abstract

Increased competition present in the higher education in BiH has conditioned the trend that institutions need to “fight” for each student through quality development at higher education institutions. This paper deals with means of enhancing quality at eMPIRICA College through continual investigation of students’ satisfaction.

For the purpose of this research, we used a questionnaire with 26 statements on quality at the higher education institution, which were grouped in four quality dimensions using factor analysis. In addition, satisfaction and loyalty of students were measured where we compared students’ expectations and perceptions at the beginning and end of the academic year. Thus, a gap in the quality of education services at eMPIRICA was noted, as well as the gap in regards to satisfaction and loyalty.

Using MANOVA it has been ascertained that there is a significant statistical difference between expected and perceived quality on the part of the students throughout all quality dimensions as well as in terms of students’ loyalty, and there is no significant statistical difference in satisfaction of students. Using ANOVA it has been deduced that with specific statements there are significant statistical differences in satisfaction and loyalty of students, while using t-test we observed a difference between arithmetic means of expected and perceived quality in all quality statements.