STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS AND PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of students' differences in gender, nationality, and educational level on their perception to the educational attributes of teaching quality, research quality, and internationalisation quality of the Malaysia Public Research Higher Education Institutions (MPRHEIs) in meeting the challenge of global sustainability. 500 students from five MPRHEIs were selected as the respondents of the study, which comprised of undergraduates in their second year and above as well as local and international postgraduates. A total of 418 questionnaires were collected from the respondents and inferential statistics namely t-test and the Analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis were applied in order to explain the relationship between the variables and the features of a sample population. The findings show that most hypotheses in the study are supported. In conclusion, it is believed that MPRHEIs require strong support from the stakeholders particularly the students' perception where their inputs regarding the service quality of MPRHEIs are appreciated as it has the potential of leading MPRHEIs to achieve significant sustainability in this region. It is also suggested for future research to examine the perception of academicians and other stakeholders towards the quality of services in higher education in order to build sustainable MPRHEIs.