‘Service quality’ and higher education: investigating Chinese international student and academic perspectives at a UK university

ABSTRACT

For a large number of Higher Education institutions in the UK, the recruitment of international students remains vital for economic, political, cultural and educational benefits. Increasing competition within the international student market has encouraged many Higher Education institutions to pay closer attention to the quality of their educational offer, as well as the expectations and experiences of international students themselves. With an aim to present a more insightful picture of this position, this article examines the ‘service quality’ of UK Higher Education through the lens of one group of international students at a single Russell Group institution while also engaging the academic perspective in direct comparison. To achieve this, a mixed-methods research study was carried out at a location in the South East of England, with quantitative survey data collected from a convenience sample of 139 Chinese students and 27 academics, with 11 qualitative follow-up interviews. Results show both consistency and inconsistency between participant perceptions and where those consistencies and inconsistencies may exist. The findings suggest caution when assuming, as is currently prevalent in the context of highly marketised UK Higher Education, that ‘service quality’ of Higher Education can be comprehensively understood and efficiently improved from the student perspective alone.

KEYWORDS:

• Service quality
• international students
• academics
• higher education
• mixed methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Values used by this study: small effects (± 0.1), medium effects (± 0.3), and large effects (± 0.5) for correlation coefficient (r); and small effects (0.01), medium effects (0.06), and large effects (0.14) for partial eta-square (η_p²).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiaotong Zhu

Dr. Xiaotong Zhu is a Research Fellow in the Lincoln Higher Education Research Institute (LHERI) at the University of Lincoln. Xiaotong is passionate about improving learning experience of students from diverse backgrounds. Her main research interests include attainment gaps, international education, student engagement, assessment and feedback in higher education, for which she carries out quantitative and mixed methods research studies. Xiaotong also has rich experience of analysing quantitative data using SPSS and conducting meta-analysis using CMA.

John G. Sharp

Professor John G. Sharp is a Professor of Higher Education and Head of the Lincoln Higher Education Research Institute (LHERI) at the University of Lincoln. John has worked in higher education at a number of UK universities for 25 years and has a particular interest in the relationship between academic boredom, lecturer self-efficacy, student engagement and the overall quality of the university experience which he explores both qualitatively and quantitatively adopting case-study and mixed-methods designs. He also offers particular expertise in questionnaire design and the statistical analysis of data using SPSS.