Determining the Factors of Quality of Higher Education in Private and Public Universities in Bangladesh

Abstract

Ensuring quality education is a prerequisite for sustainable development. For finding the determinants of quality tertiary education, studies suggest the inclusion of relevant variables, as the customers are well diversified with students, their parents and guardians, and academic and administrative staff- each having different needs and objectives. Thus, this paper tries to incorporate forty-eight "Quality Characteristics” which previously found significant by various studies with a few uniquely appropriate local characteristics. The characteristics have been grouped into six different dimensions namely, tangibility, competence, attitude, content, delivery, and reliability. The results show that the quality of private university education mainly depends upon the competence of their academic and administrative staff, the content of their curriculum, the reliability of the institution, and the attitude of their staff. As far as the public universities are concerned, competence, content, and reliability are the variables significantly affecting the quality of their education. The findings also revealed that the provision of tangible facilities such as hostels, library, and visually appealing environment together with the delivery such as teaching presentation techniques, feedback from the students are insignificant in determining the satisfaction of the students of the private universities. The policymakers of the public universities should ensure that the content, reliability, and competency remain the prime concern to ensure students satisfaction. Thus, the public university authority should be highly concerned with its up-to-date curriculum that instils team working capabilities, provide interdisciplinary knowledge, and help to build effective communication skills. As the study was done with the objective of finding out the quality of university education from the customer's perspective, students were taken as its only sample for the study. However, a comprehensive study may be done using the other customers namely the guardians, and the administrative staffs.