Students’ Perception of Quality in Higher Education: Evidence from the Polytechnic in Croatia

Quality assessment by service users or students is becoming increasingly important. Institutions in caring about quality should question students’ satisfaction with service provided regularly. The subject of research in this paper is both students’ perception of higher education quality (in general) and students’ satisfaction with the quality of service on the example of Polytechnic in Croatia. The paper aims to explore what is the quality of higher education from students’ perspective and how students perceive the quality of service at the selected Polytechnic. The research for this paper was conducted using an online questionnaire, compiled by the authors of this paper, in June/July 2019, on a sample of 102 full-time students. The research results indicate that, according to the students’ perception, the most important determinant of quality in higher education process is quality of teaching staff, kindness of administrative staff, availability of teachers, and quality of study programs. On the other hand, the least important determinants of quality are quality of incoming students, visibility and demand for graduates, and schedule exam time without overmatching. Regarding the students’ satisfaction with the quality of service at the selected Polytechnic, the research results indicate that students are very satisfied with quality of service provided (3.8 on scale 1–5) and, for the most part, they are satisfied with their choice of higher education institution (63%).