Abstract
As marketing has become an important concept for any educational institution, a successful university is one which understands students' demands, wants and needs. These may be determined by examining students' satisfaction with the quality of services they receive.
This paper examines the satisfaction of Saudi students studying in Saudi universities in respect of their experience (perceived quality of course, instructor and classroom) and the relationship of these with their perceived learning outcomes.
A survey was carried out among Saudi students attending undergraduate, Master's, PhD and preparatory year programmes in Saudi Universities. The survey instrument contained 44 perception items based on SERVPERF [1] and measures of satisfaction and learning outcomes based on the literature. The survey was distributed to randomly-selected students from 5 universities.
Instructor characteristics, course content and classroom environment were all found to influence perceived learning outcomes, while instructor and classroom influenced student satisfaction. There were differences in perceptions related to level of study, subject specification and university size. Learning outcomes were connected with students' satisfaction.
This paper focuses on three dimensions of service quality: instructor characteristics, course content, and classroom. However, these together accounted for only 57.4% of variance learning outcomes and 41.6% of satisfaction. This suggests that other factors may contribute to service quality and students' satisfaction, and these can be explored in future studies.
Overall, students were satisfied with service quality and learning outcomes; however, a few areas are identified where services could be improved in order to meet students' expectations, improve learning outcomes and satisfaction, and therefore make Saudi universities more attractive to market their products.