Determinants of effectiveness in public higher education-students’ viewpoint

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of effectiveness in public colleges of Punjab (India) from the students’ perspective and the impact of these determinants on the satisfaction level of students. The study further explores the difference in the overall satisfaction of students’ toward college effectiveness on the basis of demographic variables.

The study uses a survey approach. The sample comprises of 369 students from 19 public/government general degree colleges of Punjab (India). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) has been used to explore the determinants of public colleges and structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to analyze the impact of these determinants on the satisfaction of students. t-Test and ANOVA have been used to examine the difference in students’ satisfaction on the basis of their demographic variables.

The research instrument has been tested for both reliability and validity. The findings showed that the eight determinants of the satisfaction of students toward public colleges, namely academic environment, college administration, students support services, learning material, infrastructure facilities, placement services, extracurricular activities and financial administration. These, eight independent variables have been entered into SEM. The SEM model shows that infrastructure facilities, academic environment, learning material, college administration, extracurricular activities and financial administration have a positive and significant impact on the students’ satisfaction. On the basis of demographic variables, significant differences in overall satisfaction have been found for gender and level of education.

Public higher education sector in Punjab suffers from many limitations. Students are the internal customers of educational institutions and their satisfaction toward higher educational institutions will make every learner’s mind and policymakers in the field of education think seriously about bringing reforms in the higher education sector in Punjab.

Punjab, a well-known state of northern India is a leader in providing higher education. But, it is a fact that public higher education sector in Punjab has been facing many challenges. Student satisfaction is the central goal of any institution and this research helps to develop new insight in the quality of public higher education.