The expectation and perception of international student for delivery service quality in International Student Centre (ISC) in public universities

Abstract

Service quality has become an important part in all advanced organization’s strategic plan. Higher attention on service quality has resulted in increased profit. In the case of higher learning institution has possesses all the characteristics of service industry such as reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The main aim for this study was to examine the perception of international student for service quality delivered by International Student Centre (ISC) in public universities and secondary objective was to identify the gap between expectation and perception using the gap analysis. Data were collected using questionnaire and analyse using the descriptive statistic. Using the modified SERVQUAL as a measure, this study asked international student during 2015-2016 academic session in three public universities in Malaysia consist of University Technology Malaysia, Northern University of Malaysia and Islamic International University Malaysia to complete a service quality survey to compare their expectation and perceptions. Therefore, gaps in educational service quality at the higher education can be measured. The finding shows that the mean score of all dimension of perception were negative and the gap in the quality of service is large. International Student Centre (ISC) should improving their service to meet the customer satisfaction. Thus, improvements are required across all four dimension of service quality.