Abstract
Achieving "World Class" status is an aspiration of any organisation including education providers such as Universities. Excellence in education requires an outstanding faculty, high quality teaching, the provision of strong student support facilities, and a comfortable professional environment, as well as highly prepared and motivated students. Benchmarking, which involves searching for practices that lead to superior performance should also be important. This research seeks to explore areas for best practices in higher education by benchmarking student satisfaction using importance-performance (quadrant) analysis to identify areas where resources could be more efficiently allocated. More specifically, we evaluate the satisfaction level of students, measure their perceptions of the factors that are important when receiving education services and identify areas of service priority. A total of 832 responses were received from a survey of 1200 undergraduate business students at four private educational institutions in Malaysia. Using factor analysis we identify 12 factors from an original set of 53 satisfaction drivers. The 12 factors are professional comfortable environment; student assessments and learning experiences; classroom environment; lecture and tutorial facilitating goods; education requires an outstanding faculty, high quality teaching, the provision of strong student support facilities, and a comfortable professional environment, as well as highly prepared and motivated students. Benchmarking, which involves searching for practices that lead to superior performance should also be important. This research seeks to explore areas for best practices in higher education by benchmarking student satisfaction using importance-performance (quadrant) analysis to identify areas where resources could be more efficiently allocated. More specifically, we evaluate the satisfaction level of students, measure their perceptions of the factors that are important when receiving education services and identify areas of service priority. A total of 832 responses were received from a survey of 1200 undergraduate business students at four private educational institutions in Malaysia. Using factor analysis we identify 12 factors from an original set of 53 satisfaction drivers. The 12 factors are professional comfortable environment; student assessments and learning experiences; classroom environment; lecture and tutorial facilitating goods; textbook and tuition fees; student support facilities; business procedures; relationship with teaching staff; knowledgeable and responsive faculty; staff helpfulness; feedback; and class sizes. Service priority areas are also identified which could help educational institutions to more effectively and efficiently achieve and sustain a "World Class" status.