Psychological contract profiling for managing the learning experience of higher education students

ABSTRACT

The quality agenda of higher education has a clear focus on teaching and learning. In this study, we apply a service marketing approach (GAP model) to discover the psychological contract (implicit expectations and obligations) of Hungarian higher education students (N = 356), exploring their expectations, satisfaction, obligations and self-image. Combining the emerged six factors for expectations (personalization, development of soft skills, competent teachers, labour market preparedness, support, flexibility) and three factors of obligations (performance and activity, preciseness and punctuality, obedience and respect), we created Psychological Contract Profile Clusters (outcome-centred, teacher-centred, learner-centred, learning-centred, content-centred and self-centred students). We discuss the possibilities of using the findings in order to enhance the learning experience through psychological profile clustering based quality development.

KEYWORDS:

• Service quality
• service marketing
• higher education management
• psychological contract
• student typology
• student subcultures

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Laszlo Horvath holds a PhD in Educational Sciences and he is an assistant professor at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Education (Hungary). As an economist-andragogue, he is dealing with leadership and management issues in educational institutions. His research interests are learning organization, higher education management, educational innovation and digital transformation in education. Currently, he is providing professional support to the organizational development process of 150 low-performing schools in Hungary, focusing on equity. He teaches organizational theory, change management, organizational development and entrepreneurial skills development courses in teacher education and human resources counselling programmes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ÚNKP-16-3 New National Excellence Programme of the Ministry of Human Capacities, Hungary.