Investigating the Factors Impacting the Student Satisfaction With the Universities: A Comparative Study of Malaysia and Pakistan

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors impacting the student satisfaction with the public and private universities of Malaysia and Pakistan, which are countries representing South/South-East Asia in cross-culture perspective. The study has applied a quantitative survey design guided by five hypotheses. A questionnaire was distributed among the students of private and public universities. A conceptual framework has been developed based on the modification of Student Satisfaction Index (SSI) model to measure the satisfaction of students from different aspects, such as university image, university location, quality of academic staff, university facilities, student expectation, overall student satisfaction. The research method used was a survey-based questionnaire that consisted of a total of 396 responses from the university students. The data were analyzed with SPSS and SmartPLS 3; the results indicate that when the comparison was made separately between private and public universities of Malaysia and Pakistan. The comparative statistical score was obtained using independent sample t-Test, the university facilities of Malaysian universities resulted higher than universities in Pakistan. Therefore, the independent sample t-test results conclude that the university facilities have a significant evidence (p=0.00) to support our research findings that university facilities do affect the student satisfaction more in Malaysia (mean=4.1788) than Pakistan (mean =3.7212) and the research hypothesis is significant that there is a significant difference in student satisfaction towards university facilities in Malaysia and Pakistan. Similarly, the quality of academic staff (p=0.035) has a significant effect on student satisfaction in Malaysia (mean=3.8283) and Pakistan (mean=3.6641). Furthermore, this leads the student expectation and overall student satisfaction level of Malaysia students are higher than students in Pakistan. However, student satisfaction level on university image and university location in Malaysia and Pakistan do not differ. The study is useful for university management to improve university students satisfaction. The future researchers are recommended further explore demographic and cultural variables impact on student satisfaction.