Assessment of Students’ Satisfaction of Service Quality in Takoradi Polytechnic: The Students’ Perspective.

Abstract

Higher educational institutions are increasingly placing greater emphasis on meeting students’ expectations and needs as student perceptions of higher educational facilities and services are becoming more important. To investigate students’ satisfaction of service quality at the Takoradi Polytechnic, a study was conducted using the SERVQUAL instrument for measuring expectations and perceptions according to five quality dimensions. One hundred and eighty-eight students were sampled using the SERVQUAL questionnaire. The study shows that students’ perceptions of service quality exceeded their expectations on four service quality dimensions namely tangibility, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, while their expectations for reliability exceeded their perceptions. It is recommended that, the management of Takoradi Polytechnic must maintain or improve if possible their tangibility, assurance, empathy and responsiveness. Nevertheless, the institution must take urgent measures to tactically tackle their reliability dimension.

Key Words: Service quality, Expectations, Perceptions, Takoradi Polytechnic