Educational Quality and Students’ Complaint Handling: A Case of Private Higher Insti-tutions in Addis Ababa

Abstract

Higher educational institutes like other service organizations are realizing the significance of customer-centered philosophies and are turning to quality management approaches to help manage their operations/service delivery. On the other hand, the nature of students’ complaints and their effective handling by the management, through set procedures, play an important role in managing the quality of educational services in public and private institutions at the tertiary level. Moreover, students, especially from private higher educational institutions, are believed to be the customers paying their tuition fees, and therefore, should be treated well on the part of handling their complaints to draw a competitive advantage. The paper identifies major problems that students complain about and the management's responsiveness in effectively handling those complaints, considering a critical step in promising operational quality in three private higher institutions: St. Mary’s University, Queens College, and Admas University. A descriptive study was designed to investigate the problem areas and their root causes, as identified through the preliminary investigation with a group of students. SPSS 15.0 package was used to perform all the analyses in line with the research objectives. Factor analysis and ANO-VA statistics were applied to check the unidimensionality of scale items and compare the performance of the three Private higher institutions over the stated issues respectively. The research findings reveal that the major focus of private higher educational institutions under study is on attracting new enrolments rather than treating the existing students effectively. Finally, the study offers directions and implications to private higher educational institutions to ensure quality service delivery through appropriately handling students’ complaints.