Quality Gap Analysis on Education Services

Abstract

Services quality has been studied since the 80’s, however only recently education services have been considered under this theoretical approach. Education may be considered as a service since local and global competition have been becoming stronger and higher education institutions are forced toadopt a market-oriented vision in order to keep their performance levels and to satisfy their students. This articleaims to assessquality gaps of adistance Public Administration undergraduate course. Therefore, we applied a quality gaps model to ten courses belonging to the Open University system in Brazil, researching course coordinatorsand students. Themulti-methods researchnoticed that institutionsgenerallydo not adopta market-oriented model for decision-making in their courses and, therefore do not own a well-defined process to identify students’ expectations and, consequently,to create quality strategies andpoliciesbased on theseexpectations. On the otherhand, althoughhigher educationis legallyregulatedby the Ministry ofEducation, institutions seekdifferentiation in the market byhiring and retaining qualified and caring personnel and by thedevelopment ofinnovativeandexcitinglearning activitiesthat stimulatestudent motivation. These actions are strategically differentiated and help reducing barriers related to distance education. Theinfrastructure which is vital to thesuccess of atechnology-based courseis, still,a limitationinremote areas.Finally, a t-test showed there was a favorableperception of quality for both students andcoordinators, but the latterwere moreoptimistic.
Keywords: Distance education, Education services, Gap analysis, Services marketing; Services quality.