SERVQUAL as a Measuring Instrument for Service Provider Gaps in Business Schools

Abstract

Student evaluation of the education they receive has long been an area of concern to academics and institutions. A recent paper identified more than 1300 articles and books dealing with research on student ratings of teaching [Cashin 1990]. Most tertiary institutions require it of their academic staff to evaluate their teaching. Most serious teachers have recognised evaluation's importance in being able to assess the quality of the product they deliver, to manage it, and to improve it. Yet there is certainly no standard approach to the evaluation of the education quality, and this would be particularly true of schools of management and business. Management teachers and also institutions, would probably admit to being frustrated at some time or another in their efforts to assess the quality of the education and related services they provide. In 1983 Lovelock identified part of the problem in service organisations as being related to inbreeding: “… Most hoteliers have grown up in the hotel industry. And most hospital and college administrators have remained within the confines of health care, or higher education, respectively” [Lovelock 1983]. Such relatively constrained exposure reduces the objectivity in determining service requirements and sensitivity to the external influences setting them. It is plausible that managers of institutions of higher management rationalise their attitudes towards the quality of service [as opposed to education the product] as follows: “MBAs expect things to be tough”; or, “Executives like to get ‘back to boarding school or residence’, it makes them feel young again/like real students again/like they're in a real learning environment.”

Citation

Rigotti, S. and Pitt, L. (1992), "SERVQUAL as a Measuring Instrument for Service Provider Gaps in Business Schools", Management Research News, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 9-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb028197