QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – WHICH DIMENSIONS CAN BE IDENTIFIED FROM THE RESPONSES OF STUDENTS OF ECONOMICS

Detailed consideration of quality in higher education requires identifying the primary users of service in higher education because the educational process involves many stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, government, enterprise... It is generally accepted that students are the primary customers because they are involved in different roles: they are the product of the process, the internal customer for campus facilities, the labourers of the learning process and the internal customer of the delivery of the course material. So, it becomes necessary to identify the determinants of service quality from the stand point of students being the primary customer. Developing a service quality model to measure the student’s perception on quality is a very complex and tedious task because the service quality dimensions cover many areas. Naturally, defining the dimensions of quality in higher education is based on the dimensions of service quality in other areas. Exploring quality in different areas, authors state different dimensions, i.e. they explore different aspects of users’ satisfaction with some services. Different dimensions of service quality are used for different industries but there are some similarities between them. But, researchers agree that there is no single dimension which can be applicable for all the service sectors. In the literature, one can find different articles that deliver results of identifying dimensions of quality in higher education based on research conducted in different regions of the world, but literature is scarce when analyzing the research conducted in the area of B&H. This prompted the implementation of this research. Furthermore, each state has a specific educational system and it is necessary, to continuously explore and upgrade the models of service quality in higher education and its dimensions of quality. The aim was to offer students as many as possible statements about the quality of the educational process in order to be able to identify the relevant dimesions of service quality in higher education.