International Students’ Satisfaction Level towards Service Quality in Academic Aspect and Loyalty to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

International Students’ Satisfaction Level towards Service Quality in Academic Aspect and Loyalty to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

1Mun Chong Sin, 2Bin Boon Yusof, 3Kit Yeng Sin
1&2Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), School of Education, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, 81100 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.
3University Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), School of Business Innovation & Technopreneurship, 01000 Kangar, Perlis, Malaysia.
Corresponding Author: simonsinmunchong@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
In recent years, the number of international students has increased greatly in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Despite the international dimension of higher education gaining more importance nowadays, there have been limited studies exploring the satisfaction of the international students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the international students’ satisfaction level towards the service quality in UTM. In addition, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between the students’ satisfaction level and their loyalty. A quantitative research methodology was adopted whereby a questionnaire consisting of three parts was utilized: Part A described the demographic data of the samples; Part B (44 items) investigated the international students’ satisfaction level which was adopted from the Parasuraman’s SERVQUAL model and; Part C (10 items) identified the students’ loyalty. A total of 334 international students studying in UTM, Johor Bahru Campus participated in the questionnaire and the results were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The findings showed that international students were not satisfied with the service quality provided in UTM. The expectation score was greater than the perception score in five dimensions of SERVQUAL model, namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis results showed that responsiveness, assurance, and empathy were the three dimensions which had significant relationship with the students’ loyalty. In conclusion, the findings of this study suggested that the administrators of UTM should improve the service quality in UTM to increase the students’ satisfaction.
Keywords: Students’ satisfaction, Students’ loyalty, SERVQUAL, Service quality, Academic aspect

INTRODUCTION
In line with the ‘Ninth Malaysia Plan’, the Malaysian government has aspired to become a regional higher education centre since 2006 to attract more foreign students (Down, 2009). The Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) in Malaysia has targeted to attract 200,000 international students by the year 2020 (MoHE 2007). As a result, the population of foreign students has increased from 580 in 1995 to 93,000 students in 2010, causing Malaysia to be ranked 11th in the same year based on the population of students (The Edge 2011).
As with all other service industries, service quality is the key to success for higher education sector (Rezaei, Matin, Hajizadeh, Soroush, Mohammadi, Babakhany and Jamshidi 2017). According to Parasuraman, Zeithhalm, and Berry (1988), the service of an institution is judged with different dimensions and its quality could determine how satisfied a customer is (Galeeva 2016). The customers would naturally feel more satisfied if the service quality they perceive is higher. Furthermore, based on the research conducted by Dehghan,Dugger, Dobrzykowski and Balazs (2014), the expectations of the customers connect with their perception of the service quality, and thus the customers’ loyalty could be influenced by the quality of a service.
This study was conducted at UTM, Johor Bahru, which is one of the research universities in Malaysia. According to the MoHE in Malaysia (2013), the number of international students studying in UTM has been increasing over the years. In 2015, the total number of undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD students in UTM was 29,881. Among thes

In-Text Citation: (Sin, Yusof, & Sin, 2018)
To Cite this Article: Sin, M. C., Yusof, B. B., & Sin, K. Y. (2018). International Students’ Satisfaction Level towards Service Quality in Academic Aspect and Loyalty to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(10), 838–850.

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