Abstract:

Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to further empirical evidence and identifying, at an international level, the extent to which business students expected to be treated as customers at a higher educational institution (HEI). By doing so we also aim at developing a comparison of perceived student-customer orientation between established and new market economies.

Design/methodology/approach:
Cross-sectional quantitative survey, factor analysis, paired samples t-tests, MANOVA.

Findings:
The results suggest a relative assimilation of students’ perceptions across different categories of educational experience with regards to their expectations they have towards higher education.

Practical implications:
Institutions across different national contexts need to compete on a similar basis in order to attract students internationally.

Originality/value:
In addition to the categories of educational experiences where students expect to be treated as customers, the results identified that students’ perceptions converge across the countries in our study.

Keywords:

Neoliberalism, Marketization of Higher Education, New Market Economies, Students, Customers, Clients.