Measuring Service Quality in South Africa Higher Education: Developing a Multidimensional Scale

Increased competition in the educational environment has contributed to the growing importance of service quality measurement at higher education institutions. This paper investigates aspects of service quality in higher education as a step towards developing a standardised scale for its measurement. Using structured questionnaires, survey data was collected from students (n = 391) from two South African universities. Findings indicate that the service quality in higher education scale is a multidimensional construct loading on 13 factors with reasonable reliability coefficient and some construct validity. Significant relationships were found among a number of study variables. Some further research directions were suggested and policy implications discussed.