Survey on students' complaints handling and response practices of private university colleges in Addis Ababa
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Date
2010-02
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Addis Ababa Universty
Abstract
Student complaint handling procedures and practices play an important role in the
management of higher education, both in public and private domains. Students,
especially, those in private higher educational institutions, are believed to be the
customers, as they are responsible for paying their tuition fees. Handling the complaints
coming from students and responding accordingly can help university colleges to convert
associated threats into opportunities to perform better than their competitors and draw
competitive advantage.
Keeping this in mind, the study is designed to assess the problems related to handling
students' complaints and the procedures used by the private University Colleges in
responding to such complaints. Additionally, an attempt was made to identifY the major
problems students complain about and their root causes, and the challenges faced by the
management in handling student complaints. Descriptive survey method of study was
applied to investigate the major problems and their causes. A self-administered
questionnaire with the basic issues (as identified through extensive literature review and
preliminary investigation with a group of students) related to the nature and types of
complaints was prepared, and administered by the researcher with two groups (students
and management) of respondents. All the responses obtained from respondents were
analyzed using SPSS software package. Inline with the study objectives, Percentages,
Means, Factor, ANOVA, and t-test scores were computed.
Factor analysis was carried out to group various variables of the study to represent
unidimensionality. In this way, nine dimensions representing various issues related to the
nature of complaints and handling procedure were identified and named appropriately.
These dimensions were used as the base for comparing and contrasting the performance
of the three University Colleges over the stated issues. The findings of the research reveal
that the major focus of many private higher educational institutions is on attracting new
enrolments than treating effectively the existing students to make them loyal. Moreover,
problems have been reported related to the institutional facilities and the staff behavior
while handling and responding to student's complaints by the management. However,
most of the complaints were reported to be associated with non-transparent grading
system. Finally, the study offers some directions and implications to higher education
sector, and provides insight to the management of private higher educational institutions
in handling students' complaints.
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Education