Greater access to education for many South Africans is inextricably linked to the development of the country and its collective ability to deal with the many socio– economic challenges it presently faces. The availability of financial aid at Higher Education Institutions to support financially needy and academically deserving students as part of a comprehensive programme to address the need for skills development, socio–economic backlogs and imbalances that exist in the country is supported by various Government Departments, private donors and Higher Education Institutions. Financial Aid Offices responsible for the distribution of both public and private donor funding, face various challenges at South African universities in their endeavours to render quality service and prompt service delivery to their clients, the students who are the recipients of this funding. The present study attempts to identify the most important service quality dimensions relevant to effective and efficient service delivery in the Financial Aid Office at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Furthermore, this study aims to assess the performance of the Financial Aid Office to provide possible recommendations with a view to improving service delivery at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Against this background, the primary objective of this study is to measure financial aid students’ perceptions of service quality with a Financial Aid Office at a Higher Education Institution and estimate the effect these perceptions have on service delivery. All bursary and loan awardees from 2008, that is, only students who were successful in their financial aid applications for 2008, were invited to collect and complete a questionnaire at the Financial Aid Office at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. v The measuring instrument used was a self-administered, structured questionnaire divided into two sections. Section A measured service quality perceptions of the Financial Aid Office of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Section B measured personal data of the respondents. A total of 500 questionnaires was distributed of which 228 were returned, yielding a final sample of 204 that could be statistically analysed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the empirical results. Overall, the results show that respondents were, by and large, satisfied with the service rendered by the Financial Aid Office at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Thus, perceptions of the five service quality dimensions measured in this study were favourable, implying that respondents did not have any major problems with the present service offering of the Financial Aid Office. It is important to note that while these results indicate favourable perceptions of service quality of the Financial Aid office at one point in time, they will not necessarily be permanent. The Financial Aid Office must therefore ensure that it continues to build on this valuable strength. Specifically, the Financial Aid Office should continue delivering this level of quality of service and concentrate on improving the service quality of the items in the questionnaire with the lowest mean scores. Service quality is an important construct and needs to be assessed in Financial Aid Offices to ensure the desired outcome of producing more graduates, especially from financially needy and academically deserving backgrounds. Students, as customers, deserve the best service, as they would expect from any other service provider such as a bank or a supermarket. The strengths of this Financial Aid Office can serve to assist other universities in providing a positive student experience through the delivery of a quality service.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8711 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Gallant, Brian |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MBA |
| Format | xi, 86 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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