Student satisfaction and Quality of Education Services in The University of Bari

The process of measurement, evaluation and efficiency improvement of the Italian Universities has become of fundamental importance for the accountability responsibilities to various stakeholders: students and their families, institutions, companies and especially the Government, that is the main donor. Recently, the Italian universities have adopted a competitive behavior in order to maximize their share of public resources allocation in a framework of constant reduction in funding. In this competitive scenario, the students can be considered as “customers”, since they can choose the university in which to enroll or change it in case of dissatisfaction, if it doesn’t meet their expectations. For this reason, the Universities should plan their “educational offer” on the basis of the needs expressed by their stakeholders, first of all taking care about students’ placement and continuous improvement of service quality. The last reform of the Italian university system has been aimed at improving the quality of service offered, entrusting the National Agency of Evaluation (ANVUR) to oversee the related processes. Through the data collected by the last survey “Opinione degli studenti”, this paper deals with the assessment of the students satisfaction in the three areas of education, teaching and interest for academic courses, as stated by Anvur questionnaire. Through multivariate statistical models (logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression, multidimensional scaling and PCA), student satisfaction has been measured with reference to quality of teachers, teaching materials and logistical support, under the most relevant variables: students’ percent of lessons attendance, type of course (first and second level degree) and course scientific group.