Abstract:

Different factors, as the increasing mobility of students, or recent constraints in funding available from governments, mean that universities are facing an unprecedented level of competition in their attempts to attract students and resources. Providers of higher education are under mounting pressure to demonstrate their quality as a measure of social and financial accountability to students, the public, and their governments. These facts have increased the pressure to develop standardised performance indicators to compare institutions at the national and international level.

The goal of this paper is the construction of a model to measure Satisfaction of teachers and students at University level. Although we apply our method to a specific university (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain), it can be generalized in order to be used by any other University.

Our method is based on a Satisfaction Study carried out on both students and teachers through a questionnaire designed following several structured group interviews;

We use Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), which allows to measure latent variables with manifest variables from surveys. The estimation method is Partial Least Squares Path Modelling (PLS-PM) which is the reference with a large number of variables and low sample size. PLS-PM was introduced in the late 70s by Herman Wold. Its actual success is closely related to the success of the customer satisfaction index developed by Claes Fornell.

The proposed methodology is applied to a sample of 600 students and 40 teachers at Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain. Different tables and graphs show both the results and the meaning of the obtained global index.

Keywords:

Satisfaction Study, Structural Equation Modelling.