Managing the quality of undergraduate students: Evidence from Ghanaian higher learning institutions

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which selected Ghanaian higher learning institutions (HLIs) respond to demands for quality improvement in the sector. It equally tests the psychometric properties of the survey instrument across different cultural settings. Given the consideration of the confidence of interval guidelines of 99% and the margin of error at ± 5%, 660 undergraduate students and academic staff were sampled. Since this study uses an Internet-based survey through a list-based sampling frame, convenient sampling was employed using the University Experience Survey (UES) scale to collect the data from the respondents of four public HLIs. The findings provide cross-cultural evidence on the validity of the UES scale given the fit indices of the measurement model, values of the average variance extracted (AVE), and composite reliability index (CRI). The findings also reveal that while undergraduate students are satisfied with the aspects of teaching quality (TQ), student support (SS), and skill development (SD), they express dissatisfaction with the aspect of learning resources (LR) and learner engagement (LE) in the sampled HLIs. The findings interestingly reveal that while academic staff are satisfied with the TQ and SD, they stress dissatisfaction with the LE in their respective HLIs.