INTRODUCTION
In recent years, one of the main concerns in universities has been student satisfaction. The concept of student satisfaction is becoming increasingly important among institutions of higher learning. The customer service approach towards students that universities are using today focuses on meeting demands and expectations of students and fostering overall satisfaction. Product and service marketers know that in order to keep customers, they must offer high quality service has found that today’s students are 24 hours, 7- day-a-week customers who reject the service disadvantages of traditional 9-5 business practices and expect campuses to become a 24 hour domain.
METHODOLOGY
Questionnaire
In order to evaluate the levels of expectations and satisfaction of RMIT Business students, a questionnaire was designed. It was based on the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI), which was produced by USA Group NoelLevitz (2000) and whose purpose is to collect basic demographic information about respondents and measure student perceptions regarding both the importance of, and satisfaction with, key student services and campus experiences in traditional campus environments.
The questionnaire was emailed to 135 students by using their university student email addresses. Along with each questionnaire, each respondent was given an informed consent form outlining the research study and indicating that their participation was completely voluntary, their responses would be confidential and anonymous, and that results would only be reported in aggregate form. If the student agreed to participate in the study, he/she was expected to send back the completed questionnaire to the researcher via email. A response rate of 49.6% was obtained.
CONCLUSION
In general, RMIT students have higher level of expectation than satisfaction, meaning that students’ needs are not being fully met. Within the past few years, the general public has been bombarded with advertising that stresses customer service. Typically, higher education institutions do not treat their students as customers, but rather as partners in the educational process .
