Abstract— This research aims to investigate the dimensions of Industrial Engineering students’ perceived service quality at Indonesia public higher education institution context. The research used a quantitative approach. The data was carried out through survey to 89 industrial engineering higher education students. The data analysis was using factor analysis and reliability test with cronbach alpha approach. The research result shows that the industrial engineering students’ perceived service quality is consist of five dimensions which are academic content and knowledge center, supporting facilities, lecture responsibilities, social activities, and class program and facilities.
Index Term—Perceived S ervice Quality Dimension, Industrial Engineering, S tudent.
I. INT RODUCT ION
Nowadays, students‟ perceived service quality is important matter for higher education institutions due to the intensive competition among them, internationalization spirit, higher expectation towards higher education institution, and increase of full fee payment and the classification of education as a marketable service [1]. Numerous researchers also have proved that students‟ perceived service quality also has positive influence to students‟ satisfaction [2 – 5]. Meanwhile the students‟ satisfaction could affect the student self confidence that has important role in producing a quality of student [2]. Given this, the higher education institution, including industrial engineering major, should focus how to manage their students‟ perceived service quality.
At Indonesia context, the service quality focus for industrial engineering education institutions is not too encouraging. It could be reflected from their accreditation status. From 136 accredited institutions, there are only 13 Institutions with “A” accreditation status and 40 institutions with “B” accreditation status [6]. This condition leads to the necessity of the industrial engineering students perceived service quality investigation.
This research tried to find the industrial engineering students perceived serviced quality dimensions at public education institution context. We choose the public industrial engineering education institution student as research object for some considerations. First, the public industrial engineering education institution accreditation status is also not good
enough. There are only 3 institutions with “A” status from 11 accredited public education institutions [6]. Second, the public educations tend to increase their full fee payment. Therefore, it should be balanced by its quality to avoid the communities‟ apathies. Third, most of previous researches that conducted on this topic are taking private higher education institutions context [1, 4, 7 – 9]. Furthermore, there is no research that focused on industrial engineering students. This will implies the lack of appropriate reference for public industrial engineering education institutions in measuring their students‟ perceived quality.
II. LITERATUREREVIEW
One of the competitive priorities which have migrated from the literature of manufacturing strategy to the service arena is quality [8]. In the services literature, the construct of quality is conceptualized based on perceived service quality [4]. Many services marketing researchers tried to define what perceived service quality is. Although they have various definitions, eventually they agreed that perceived service quality is related to overall customer service evaluation according to their service expectation and performance perception level [1, 4, and 10]
At the education institution context, the concept of perceived service quality is means students perceived quality because the customer of education institution is students [11, 12, and 13]. Therefore we could define students‟ perceived quality as the student evaluation of the education institution services performance level that they received compared with their expectation level. It is important to be noted that the students perceived service quality is not only limiting to the quality of teaching and learning [7].
The topics of students perceived quality has attracted a lot of researchers [1, 2, 4, 7 – 9, 14 – 20]. However, the most popular research that conducted is to answer the question “what are the measures of the students‟ perceived quality?” This phenomenon is quite reasonable because the measures are prerequisite for measurement process [7]. If we take the inappropriate measures, it will lead to bias measurement result. Hence, it may effect in wrong strategic decision making. Numerous researchers proposed that the students‟ perceived quality is could be measured using Servqual dimensions which are reliability, tangibles, assurance, empathy, and responsiveness [4, 8, 17, and 18]. Their
The Exploratory Study of Industrial Engineering
Students‟ Perceived Quality Dimension
Sik Sumaedi
1, I Gede Mahatma Yuda Bakti
21,2
hypotheses is developed based on main consideration that the education is services so the measures for the services is also could be applied for education.
On other side, numerous researchers didn‟t agree with the used of Servqual dimensions as the measures of student perceived quality for two main reasons. First, the Servqual dimension is more focus on functional quality than technical quality dimension. Second, the five Servqual dimension may not represent the characteristic of business operation and business environment of universities [1]. Therefore they conducted exploratory researches to find out what the most appropriate students perceived quality dimensions are. Briefly, the summary of those research results and the research context is could be seen at table I.
Although those researches resulted the students perceived service quality dimension, it doesn‟t means we don‟t need to conduct another research on this topic. This caused the ability of the students perceived service quality dimension that produced by previous researches in explaining the overall students perceived service quality, either Servqual based dimension research or others, is only less than 70% [1, 2, 4, 7 – 9, 14 – 20]. This means there are any others dimensions that not covered by those research results. Therefore there is any necessity to conduct further investigation in order to get other dimensions or more complete the students perceived service quality dimensions.
Furthermore, there is lack of previous researches were focused on the public industrial engineering higher education institution. This condition leads the lack of reference in that theme. Therefore this research is expected to serve the necessity in identifying other dimensions of students perceived service quality and the necessity in providing literature related to the public industrial engineering education institution students perceived service quality.
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research is an exploratory research using quantitative approach. The data collection was carried out through survey using questionnaire. The questionnaire is divided into two main parts which are demographic profile and “students perceived service quality” variables. For the “students perceived service quality” variables, we offer 22 statements that extracted from previous literature study (mostly coming from reference [7]) using a five point Likert scale ranging from not important at all to very important. The survey was conducted on a public industrial engineering education institution at West Java with total respondents were 89 students.
The data analysis was carried out through two stages which are factor analysis and reliability test using cronbach alpha approach. The factor analysis was carried out to examine the underlying structure of the factors and define a workable set of
dimensions [14]. In simply word, the factor analysis result provides the students‟ perceived service quality dimensions with those valid indicators. The dimensions should have the latent root criterion eigenvalues higher than one to be considered significant meanwhile the indicators should have factor loadings at least 0.4. After that, the reliability test was carried out to ensure that the construct of each dimension are reliable and consistent. The construct will be consistent and reliable, if the cronbach‟s value is more than 0.60 [10, 21]. All the processes were carried out with the assistance of SPSS.
IV. RESULTANDDISCUSSION
A. Respondent Profile
Respondents of this research are 89 industrial engineering undergraduate program students of a public university. The respondents consist of 58.43% woman and 41.57% man. In terms of levels of students, 26.97% are students at level 1 and 2, 39.33% are students of level 3, and 33.71%, at level 4 students. In terms of age, 20.22% under the age of 19 years, 19 years old 32.58%, 38.20% aged 20 years, and 8.98% are aged over 21 years.
B. Students Perceived Service Quality Dimension
Table II is the results of factor analysis and reliability test. According to eigenvalues and factor loading criteria, the factor analysis indicated six dimensions. The dimensions were further analyzed to check the internal consistency using cronbach alpha approach. However, from the reliability test, dimension “5” alpha value was lower than 0.6 so the dimension was dropped as the students perceived quality dimension. Therefore the final industrial engineering students‟ perceived service quality consists of five dimensions, which explained 60.7% of the overall variance.
The first dimension is academic content and knowledge center. This dimension has six indicators (the usefulness of the module components offered in your career development; the quality of materials emphasized in course; the availability of library facilities; the chance to develop your abilities and prepare for your career; the interest that student counselors take in the progress of their students; and The usefulness of the course syllabus in fulfilling your personal needs). The “academic content and knowledge center” dimension is related to the content of academic program that provided by education institution and the knowledge center that developed to support that program. At Indonesia public education context, the availability of library or knowledge center is often viewed as complementary of academic program due to there are mostly academic assignments need library or knowledge center. This becomes reason why students view the knowledge center as a unity with the academic program.
day; the amount of computing facilities; and the availability of computing facilities). The “supporting facilities” refers to additional facility that providing by education institution for the pleasure of students, even though that facility doesn‟t directly relate to the academic program.
The third dimension is lecture responsibilities. This dimension has four indicators (the app ropriateness of the assessment system; the appropriateness of the assessment standard of course offered; the willingness of lecturers to talk with students outside of class time; and lectures are conducted in English). The “lecture responsibilities” dimens ion related to activities that become personal responsibilities for a lecture such as student assessment, teaching activities, and out side class consultancy. At mostly Indonesia public education institution, lectures have freedom in executing those activities. That condition may explain why the students view those activities as the lecture‟s personal responsibilities.
The fourth dimension is social activities. This dimension has three indicators (The activities and clubs you can join in the university; the social events that are provided for students in the university; and the availability of counselors from whom students can seek help). The “social activities” dimension related to activity or facility that provided by education institution in full filling the social needs of the students. At Indonesia context, the social activities become important due to the characteristic of its people that are more sociable [22]. And the last dimension is class programs and facilities. This dimension has three indicators (the availability of classroom activities; detailed lecture notes are distributed; and the chance that you will do well if you work hard). The “class programs and facilities” is related to class programs and facilities that provided by education institution to ensure the class activities well done.
C.Discussion
This research result showed that the students‟ perceived quality has five dimensions which are academic content and knowledge center, supporting facilities, lecture responsibilities, social activities, and class programs and facilities. This finding is quite different with the finding with previous researches as shown in table 1. This may be caused by the different research context such as the country culture or education institution status (public or private). This research was conducted at Indonesia context while none the previous researches on table 1 used Indonesia context. Lagrosen et al. [14] explained that different country culture may result in different quality perception. At their study, Lagrosen et al. has described how the different culture between Austria, Sweden, and UK effected the different students‟ quality perception. Table I itself also showed how that different country context has different student perceived service quality dimensio n.
This research finding also showed that student perceived
service quality dimension consist of the technical quality and functional quality. Hill [23] explained that technical quality relates to what is provided during the service process (knowledge, tangibles, technical solutions, etc.) while functional quality refers to how the service is provided, the interpersonal behaviors contributed by the service employee during the service encounter. At this research context, except the “social activities” dimension, all dimensions are the technical quality. This means technical quality matter is extremely important for students [15].
Furthermore, in order to satisfy their students, the management of public industrial engineering education institution needs to push their education institution to perform well on those dimensions. Some actions may be taken to achieve that aims as follows. The Public industrial engineering education institutions could adopt the five students perceived service quality dimension of this research becomes their students‟ survey instrument so that they could monitor the institution performance regularly. They also could improved their services features by integrating this five dimension with the quality function deployment (QFD) as mentio ned in reference [14]. Finally, adopting a proven quality management system such as ISO 9001 framework may produce better result in student perceived quality performance in a consistent manner [24].
V. CONCLUSION
As the aims of this research, we could concluded that the industrial engineering students‟ perceived service quality in Indonesia context is consist of five dimensions which are academic content and knowledge center, supporting facilities, lecture responsibilities, social activities, and class programs and facilities. This finding also shown that most of students‟ perceived service quality dimensions are included in technical quality. The management of public industrial engineering education institution needs to focus and perform well on thos e dimensions by taken some actions such as using those dimension as student survey instruments, improving service features with QFD, and adopting a proven quality management system (ex. ISO 9001) in order to satisfy their students.
A. Limitation and Further Research
study with involving more public industrial engineering education institution in Indonesia.
REFERENCES
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TABLE I
EXP LORATORY RESEARCH ON STUDENTS PERCEIVED QUALITY
Author (s)
Research Context Research Result
Country Type of Education Institution Dimension of Students Perceived Quality Overall Variance Athiayaman
(1997)
Australia A medium-sized university Services, Core Services 1 (Student workload; Subject content), Core Services 2 (Teaching capability; class size; Staff availability)
N/A
LeBlanc and Nguyen (1997)
Canada A small business school Contact
personnel/faculty; reputation; physical evidence; contact personnel/
administration; curriculum; responsiveness ; access to facilities
29.4%
Oldfield and Baron (2000)
UK A Business and
Management Faculty at a UK university
Requisite; Acceptable; Functional 51%
Sohail and Shaikh (2004)
Saudi Arab
An Industrial Management college of semi autonomous of government institution of higher education
Contact
personnel; reputation; physical
evidence; curriculum; responsiveness; access to facilities
67.2%
Kwek et al. (2010)
Malaysia A private higher education Contact
personnel; quality of librarians; access to facilities; reputation; amount of recreational activities; cost of courses offered; curriculum; staff responsiveness ;
11.26%
Poh and Abu Samah (2006)
Malaysia A private e-learning university faculty of business administration
Course content; facilities; lecturer and faculty; social activities; concern for student; assessment; instruction medium
68.3%
Lagrosen et al. (2004)
Austria and Sweden
Academic business faculty of an Austria and Sweden University
Corporate collaboration; information and responsiveness; courses offered; campus facilities; teaching practices; internal evaluations, external evaluations; computer facilities; collaboration and comparison; post study factors; library resources
TABLE II
FACTOR ANALYSIS AND RELIABILITY TEST RESULT
Indicators Dimension 1 Dimension 2 Dimension 3 Dimension 4 Dimension 5 Dimension 6
X1 0,836
X2 0,669
X3 0,624
X4 0,594
X5 0,550
X6 0,499
X7 0,809
X8 0,758
X9 0,720
X10 0,660
X11 0,825
X12 0,788
X13 0,620
X14 0,506
X15 0,869
X16 0,811
X17 0,424
X18 0,773
X19 0,742
X20 0,671
X21 0,563
X22 0,552
Eigenvalue 6,68 2,14 1,91 1,40 1,30 1,22
% of Variance 30,36 9,74 8,67 6,36 5,90 5,57
Reliability Test (the
cronbach‟s value)
0,788 0,792 0,755 0,709 0,574 0,668
Interpretation academic content and knowledge center Dimension
supporting facilities dimension
lecture responsibiliti es dimension
social activities dimension
Dropped class programs and facilities dimension
TABLE III
THE DESCRIP TION OF INDICATORS
Indicators Description
X1 The usefulness of the module components offered in your career development. X2 The quality of materials emphasized in course.
X3 The availability of library facilities
X4 The chance to develop your abilities and prepare for your career
X5 The interest that student counselors take in the progress of their students. X6 The usefulness of the course syllabus in fulfilling your personal needs. X7 The availability of recreational facilities.
X8 The places provided for students to relax during the day. X9 The amount of computing facilities.
X10 The availability of computing facilities.
X11 The appropriateness of the assessment system.
X12 The appropriateness of the assessment standard of course offered X13 The willingness of lecturers to talk with students outside of class time. X14 Lectures are conducted in English.
X15 The activities and clubs you can join in the university.
X16 The social events that are provided for students in the university. X17 The availability of counselors from whom students can seek help. X18 The availability of the assistance offered by faculty outside the class. X19 The personal attention students get from lecturers.
X20 The availability of classroom activities. X21 Detailed lecture notes are distributed.
