Student perceptions of quality education in the faculty of engineering at Sana ’ a University

There is a growing interest in improving the quality of higher education in Yemen. This is evident from the adoption of curriculum reviews by various universities, conferences centring around the quality of education, as well as the various institutions focusing on the quality of education. The drive has focused mainly on the perspective of the teaching profession. Little research has focused on the perspective of the students. This is viewed by the authors as a missing link since the students are the beneficiaries of the education they receive. Thereby, it is viewed as a fundamental perspective which should be incorporated in the overall drive for enhancing the quality of higher education in Yemen. This research attempts to bring the perspective of the students at the final year at the various departments in the Faculty of Engineering at Sana’a University. It is important for the various departments to know what students perceive as important and to evaluate their performance in the various factors in order to focus their efforts on the important factors where their performance is found to need attention. The research uses a quantitative approach using surveys to provide the student perspective on the weights of various factors that affect the quality of their education as well as the performance of the department on each of the factors.


Introduction:
Education is necessary for society to develop and prosper. As Sivakumar and Sarvaliingam (2010, p. 20) state, "Education is one of the basic needs for human development and to escape from poverty". Brennan and Teichler (2008) add that higher education is important for social and economic impacts in society. Thereby, it is important for societies in general to have sufficient outflow of students from higher education (Akareem & Hossain, 2016). Yemen is no exception.
This highlights the importance of higher education and the need to continuously improve the quality of higher education. Private universities that have opened up in Yemen in recent years have played a major role in providing competition to the public universities and highlighting the need for quality assurance and improvement in the higher education sector. Despite the role of the Ministry of Higher Education and the National Higher Education Accreditation Board, quality remains viewed from the perspective of the providers of the education service.
There are various stakeholders of higher educational institutions, both internal and external. Stakeholders include parents, employers, society, students among others.
The satisfaction of all the stakeholders is dependent on the satisfaction of the students.
The input, process and output of quality are applied on the students (Ahmed et al., 2010;Sefer et al., 2017;Khan et al., 2011). Therefore, studying what students view as important in the quality of their education and gauging performance against that from the student perspective is of prime importance. Yet students are not considered the prime stakeholders in the current system for quality in higher education in Yemen. This paper attempts to address this gap. A survey was used to measure the student perception of what is important in the quality of education received as well as their perception of the performance of the various departments in the Faculty of Engineering at Sana'a University. The objective was to establish and rank the factors that students perceive as important in their education at the final year of their undergraduate studies at the various programs offered. The survey was also designed to allow students to rate the performance of each of the factors in the Faculty of Engineering in the various departments. The performance-importance matrix provides a simple and good assessment of where efforts need to be applied to enhance the quality of education at the various departments. The survey was analysed to determine if there are any differences in student perceptions regarding the weighting of importance as well as performance by program.
Sana'a University was established in 1970 as the first university in the then measure and it may be important to establish what is understood by "quality". Different professionals such as educators, researchers and politicians have different perceptions of quality of education (Ashraf, et al., 2009). Furthermore, there is no universally accepted definition of quality applying specifically to higher education (Michael, 1998).
Accreditation agencies operating in each country have evaluated and accredited degrees and educational work offered as an attempt to assess the quality offered by the institutions (Tsinidou, et al., 2010). Despite the lack of a clear definition of quality, the importance of service quality is recognized (Tan & Simpson, 2008), and research on service quality in higher education has increased over the last two decades (Legcevic, 2010).
Some researchers are of the view that quality of education should not be measured solely on dimensions of student learning achievements relating to traditional curriculum and standards. Quality should be measured as to the relevance of what is taught and learned as well as the fit to the present and future needs of the students (Ashraf, et al., 2009) citing (Coombs, 1985). Furthermore, Ashraf et al. (2009) citing the World Bank state that they put forth the following concept: An adequate definition must include student outcomes (The World Bank, 1995, p. 46). They add that most education professionals would also include the learning environment in the definition. Khan et al. (2011) state that out of the many external and internal stakeholders of educational institutions, students are considered to be one of the most important.
They add that all the process of quality implications are applied on them and they bridge the relationship between institutions and other stakeholders (parents, employers and society) and student satisfaction leads to other stakeholder satisfaction. Ahmed et al. (2010) state that the higher the level of student satisfaction the greater the quality of students.
The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.12, N°19, May 2022 206 Sefer et al. (2017) state that higher education institutions should establish their needs and demands focusing on students as they are stakeholders and customers whose satisfaction is attached to service quality. (Khan, et al., 2011) state that students are the basic customers of educational institutions and as such should centre service and education on students. (Emery, et al., 2001) add that students should be assessed and analysed as the product of educational institutions. Khan et al. (2011) citing Low (2000 add that educational institutions are placing emphasis on increasing the satisfaction level of students with the quality of service and are regularly judged on level of satisfaction. (Athiyaman, 1997) defines service quality as "Perceived service quality is defined an overall evaluation of the goodness or badness of a product or service". An important determinant of satisfaction is the quality of service (Shemwell, et al., 1998); (Cronin Jr & Taylor, 1992)). Therefore, it is important for universities to focus on the quality of service to increase the satisfaction level of students (Helgesen & Nesset, 2007).
If the students are satisfied with the institution that reflects that students have a positive perception regarding the service quality of academic institution (Gruber, et al., 2010). With increasing competition, providing better quality services is the main tool used by academic institutions (Donaldson & Runciman, 1995). Positive perception about the quality of service offered leaves a positive image in the mind of students which finally leads them towards higher level of satisfaction (Alves & Raposo 2010; (Ahmed, et al., 2010)). Perceptions and expectations of customers regarding service quality are the basis of customer satisfaction (Christou & Sigala, 2002).
The measure of customer satisfaction in higher education is a rather new phenomenon. It is even newer in Yemen. A measure of customer satisfaction created by (Martilla & James, 1977) that was used in marketing research is the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA). IPA is simple and practical method to use, and thereby, has gained popularity as a measure of customer satisfaction in various research areas (Silva & Fernandes, 2010;Djeri et al., 2018;Ormanovic et al., 2017). IPA has been used in measuring student perceptions in higher education as to the importance and performance of various attributes (e.g. Silva & Fernandes, 2010;(Andersen, et al., 2016).
The IPA matrix consists of four quadrants where customers evaluate the importance and performance of the attributes of the service under evaluation for an organization. The y-axis represents the Importance of the attribute while the x-axis represents the Performance of the attribute. Figure 2 shows the four quadrants dividing the Importance-Performance Indicators where each quadrant is explained in the following

Methodology:
This study focused on the students in the Department of Engineering at Sana'a University regarding their perceptions of the importance of factors affecting the quality of their education and rating the performance of the department on the same factors.
The questionnaire was divided into two sections. The first section was demographic information which included department in the Faculty of Engineering, gender, age, and whether they were admitted as a general non-paying student or a paying student as shown in Table 1. No names or IDs were requested in order to maintain confidentiality and allow students to be more comfortable in responding.
It is important at this junction to describe the difference between paying and non-paying students. Paying and non-paying students is a particular situation to Sana'a University since it is a public university and was established to be free of charge to accepted students. However, as government funding dwindled to almost nothing, the university had no choice but to find another source of income to maintain itself. It was then decided to maintain the capacity for free of charge students at about 150 students at the Faculty of Engineering. These are the students with the highest grades in the acceptance test and high school grade. Those who passed the acceptance test but whose grades were less than the accepted 150 could enter the Faculty of Engineering but would have to pay for their education. These paying students (about 150) became the source of income for the various faculties at the university including the Faculty of Engineering. The second section of the survey questionnaire was developed from a literature review regarding the factors that affect student perception of service quality (Beaumont, 2012;Tsinidou et al., 2010;Akareem et al., 2016;Dumitriu, 2018;Butt & ur Rehman, 2010;Clewes, 2003;Abdullah, 2005;LeBlanc & Nguyen, 1997;Solinas et al., 2012;Nadiri et al., 2009). The factors were found to be grouped together under several headings: Teaching; Academic staff; Course structure; Academic facilities; Administrative staff; Personal development; Career prospects; and, Other factors. Lists of factors were grouped under each of the headings totalling 79 factors. These were grouped under eight main groups as shown in the following Table 3.
The questionnaire used a 10-point scale from 1-10 where 1 is very poor and 10 very good for both the importance and performance measures. A total of 449 surveys were distributed to the students of the 5 departments in the Faculty of Engineering. The total number of returned surveys was 273 (79 % return rate) and of those only 217 were complete as 56 incomplete surveys were rejected (21 % of the total). The analysis was performed using SPSS (2009) software.

Result:
The following Table 4 summarizes the results of the student survey with the entire student body and each department separately. The student responses of High Importance and Low Performance are in bold in the same table.

Analysis:
From Table 2 above, it is seen that the highest performance ratings came from the mechatronics department students followed by architectural followed by civil students.
All the means are higher than the average student body. The mechanical and electrical students rated performance lower than the average of the student body showing dissatisfaction of the students. The analysis found the demographic factors were not a factor in the responses of the students in terms of age, gender or paying or non-paying. However, there were differences in responses depending on the department. The following tables provide a summary of the results of factors for each group which students found of high importance with low performance.
The first basic group was the Teaching group with four factors with the results as shown in Table 3. The second factor (quality of seminars) was found to be unimportant and the performance was rated as low. The exception was provided by the architectural, electrical and mechanical students. This reflects the student need in these departments for more individual attention and hands on experience to be provided through seminars.
The second group of factors, Academic Staff, included factors such as academic staff qualifications, experience knowledge and communication skills. The general student body, especially electrical, mechanical and mechatronics viewed factor 19 (flexibility in the grading system) as important but performance was rated low. The grading system in the Faculty of Engineering is pre-set based on whether the course is theoretical or practical (i.e. has a practical side such as labs). The university would need to review their grading system to allow for flexibility. Architectural student's responses found that factor 13 (willingness to provide individual attention) was important and performance was rated low where these students needed academic staff to be more willing to provide individual attention. Civil engineering students viewed factor 14 (prompt and efficient feedback on work) and factor 16 (faculty evaluation system) as important and was rated low. Civil students need more prompt and efficient feedback on their work as well as more flexibility on evaluation of students. The civil engineering student body constitutes about half of all students in the Faculty of Engineering, and thereby, the staff is slower in providing feedback and less able to evaluate their students. The eighth and last group of factors was grouped under 'Other'. There were 15 factors in this group where the student body without exception found this factor important with low performance voicing the need to pay attention to the internal student feedback systems (factor 68). Mechanical students voiced the need to pay attention to admissions procedures (factor 69)and civil students voiced the need to pay attention to providing previous results faster (factor 70). The student feedback system needs to be upgraded as well as admissions procedures. There is also a need to provide results faster. An electronic system may assist in this regard.

Teaching
It is important not to rely on the classical lectures and teaching methods. There is a need to provide additional learning methods such as and seminars to add to the subject matter. This would provide students with a more thorough understanding of the subjects.

Academic Staff
The grading system is pre-set at Sana'a University in general. This does not allow academic staff any flexibility in the grading system. This needs to be corrected to allow academic staff a reasonable amount of flexibility. Furthermore, there are subjects deemed as 'theoretical' and are graded based on classwork and final exam. In reality there are classes that include projects and research which are not incorporated in the grading system such as the 'Project Management' course.
The academic staff need to provide more individual attention to their students, particularly in departments which work on that basis such as architecture. The number of civil engineering students is large in comparison to the other departments. The grading and evaluation of the students consume time and individual evaluation of students becomes difficult. A method must be devised to speed up the grading and provide better evaluation of students.

Curriculum and Course Structure
The curriculum and course structures generally need to be re-evaluated and improved.
This is particularly true for such departments as the electrical department where advances in the industry require the course structure and contents to be updated more regularly. Courses need to be designed and planned with course flexibility in mind.
Additionally, new academic staff should be provided training by the university regarding teaching skills and methods in order to teach courses in a proper manner.

Academic Facilities and Access
The academic facilities at the Faculty of Engineering need upgrading as the students responded. The students viewed that there is a need for an electronic library. (An electronic library was being implemented at the time and should be of use by the coming year). Other students at various departments found the need to the quality of, and ease of access to, academic facilities and learning resources including the adequacy of classrooms and laboratories. Generally, attention needs to be paid to student accommodation, catering services and medical facilities. There is a need to extend library working hours to accommodate student schedules.

Administrative Services
It is evident from the student survey that there is a major problem regarding administration and the services they provide. The only factor found to be appropriate in this group was the working hours. There are issues with IT support and internet (which is not available on campus) as well as required information to be provided such as procedures.

Personal Development
The Faculty of Engineering has generally not played a role in the personal development of the students. This was clear in the responses where the entire student body thought that student welfare and provision of other facilities were important and where attention was lacking. Students in two departments added career services as needing attention.

Career Prospects
Career prospects for the general student body were important but where attention needs to be provided. This includes all the factors in the group without exception and was voiced by all departments. The Faculty of Engineering has made attempts at connecting students with the industry but these have been lacking a coordinated effort making it ineffective.

Other
The students find it important to have in place a feedback system that is fast and effective. This is an area where the various departments' performance is not good. The need to submit results in a timely manner is needed for grading and admissions procedures need to be shortened. The Faculty of Engineering has been working on these issues and has succeeded in reducing the admissions procedures to two days. However, the grading system still needs to be worked on.

Limitations and further research:
This study was performed for satisfaction from the perspective of the student and in one faculty at Sana'a University. Further research should be performed to get the perspectives of other stakeholders such as teachers and parents. It would be viable to perform such surveys regularly to gauge student satisfaction on the same factors in light of improvements being made. Further research may be performed across institutions to compare policies and procedures.