Students' Perception of Hospitality Educational Services in India: A Case Study Approach

Abstract

Changes occurring in the business environment have influenced every facet of the learning environment, including curricula, assessment of outcomes, and instructional practices. Across the world, the considerations and thoughts on how students perceive or expect quality of educational services, contributes to a huge extent in improving the quality of education and academic services in Universities and Institutions. Defining the probable gaps between the expectations and perceptions of students will enable educational service providers to embark on necessary actions to augment the quality of educational services provided by a university, particularly offering a hospitality management degree. 

The aim of this study was to measure and identify any actual or perceived gaps existed between student's expectations and perceptions with regards to educational services provided to the undergraduate hotel management students of the Manipal University. Further, the study also focused on providing insights to the University on the improvements needed for future student satisfaction on educational services and quality. The study used SERVQUAL metric for the measurement of service quality of hotel management course at Manipal University and was conducted on a sample of 170 students from the two years of study. The adapted factors concerning student services at a University from the standard SERVQUAL instrument were questioned using the SERVQUAL methodology. The detailed statistical analysis was then reduced to meaningful statements that could be used by the management of University as a quality measurement tool.

The outcomes of the study resulted in a negative quality gap in all five dimensions of quality educational services: Tangible (physical environments), Reliability (trustworthiness), Responsiveness (Sensitivity), Assurance (guarantee), and Empathy (Understanding). The maximum and minimum mean of quality gap observed was -0.48 in the dimension of Tangibles and -0.11 in the dimension of Assurance respectively. It was significant to note that the perceptive gap of the female students were higher than the perceptive gap of the male students in all 5 dimensions. Female rated reliability with high mean and the male students rated tangibles with a high mean. It was also observed that the P value of female scores on the dimension off reliability 0.033 and responsive 0.031 and is statistically relevant as it is less than 0.05.