EVALUATION OF THE QUALITY OF SERVICES: A CASE STUDY IN AN ECUADORIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The high competitiveness that currently exists in the higher education sector, the increase in the number of universities and the growing demand from interested parties, has led these institutions to focus their efforts on offering a better quality of service. Ecuadorian universities, faced with this challenge, have been forced to rethink their management models, some reinforcing their strategies to achieve competitive advantages through quality of service. The objective of this research is to evaluate the quality of the services provided by the Universidad Estatal de Milagro, UNEMI, Ecuador, in order to identify opportunities for improvement. For this purpose, the literature on the subject of quality of service in higher education is reviewed, identifying the SERVQUAL scale as the most used to measure the quality of service. An adaptation of this scale was adapted, applied and validated in the UNEMI context, and, based on the Factors Analysis, three dimensions of service quality are identified: Attention and Empathy, Institutional Aspects and Tangible Aspects; which would serve to propose strategies for improvement for the case under study.

Keywords: Service quality, High Education, SERVQUAL.

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