Assuring quality service in higher education: registration and advising attitudes in a private university in Lebanon

Abstract

The first encounter of students at universities is the administrative office, which leaves a lasting imprint for their entire experience in higher education. With the exponential growth of higher education in the Middle East, private universities face hardened competition in the overall retention of students. Registrar and academic advising offices are vital components to the university as well as the front end to the universities' service quality. This study attempts to measure student attitudes of registration and academic advising across different faculties to assure positive quality service complementing that of the academic. Keeping in mind that many developing universities in the Middle East and other nations have not yet utilized automated services to meet student needs, the present study provides recommendations in the inroads en route to the development of touch-tone and Web-banner automated registration for a positive assessment of service quality.

Specific remedy for specific problem: measuring service quality in South African higher education

“…Consequently institutions of higher education are competing for the most promising students, their customers, by applying scientific business principles to recruit and retain these students (De Jager 2006). Abouchedid and Nasser (2002) argued that the service quality concept in higher education is inextricably linked to the competitive service and success of an institution. Service quality serves to meet the basic objective of enrolment and retention of students at the HE institutions (Maringe and Gibbs 2009).…”

“…While some of the studies on service quality in higher education were conceptual with global coverage others had specific country interests including: Australia (Chua 2004;Wright and O'Neil 2002); UK (Hill 1995;Pareda et al 2007;Telford and Masson 2005); Portugal (Oliveira-Brochado and Marques 2007); Singapore (Tan and Kek 2004); China and Hong Kong (Kwan and Ng 1999); Lebanon (Abouchedid and Nasser (2002); and South Africa (Cloete and Bunting 2000;De Jager 2006).…”

El impacto del sistema de aseguramiento de la calidad en el servicio entregado por las universidades privadas en Chile

“…En consonancia con los resultados obtenidos, es posible establecer que las universidades privadas también se preocupan de asegurar la calidad de sus instituciones, tal como ocurre en las universidades privadas del Medio Oriente, donde la calidad de servicio que le entregan a sus estudiantes es un aspecto crucial de resguardar, razón por la cual las oficinas de registro académicos son consideradas como elementos vitales para otorgar un buen servicio a los estudiantes [2].…”

An examination of assessment practices in colleges of business at various Middle East countries compared to the USA

“…Shaw et al (1995) reported that "although the concern for assessment currently sweeping the West is not so pronounced in the Gulf". Some universities in the Middle East assess particular portions of their operations, such as registration and advising (Abouchedid and Nasser, 2002), university training of occupational attainment (Nasser and Abouchedid, 2005), and e-learning challenges in the Arab World (Abouchedid and Eid, 2004).…”