Business Management Education in Reality

Quality Education Support

It is critically important for a business school to make sure the minimum support systems and facilities required to provide a quality education to its current as well as future students are in place. These minimum support requirements and facilities include (Douglas, Douglas & Barnes, 2006):

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  Facilitating goods such as the lectures and tutorials, presentation slides, supplementary handout documents/materials and the recommended module text.

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  The physical facilities such as the lecture theatres and tutorial rooms and their level of furnishing, decoration, lighting and layout as well as ancillary services such as catering and recreational amenities.

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  The explicit service includes the knowledge levels of staff, staff teaching ability, the consistency of teaching quality irrespective of personnel, ease of making appointments with staff, the level of difficulty of the subject content and the workload.

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  The implicit service includes the treatment of students by staff, including friendliness and approachability, concern shown if the student has a problem, respect for feelings and opinions, availability of staff, capability and competence of staff.

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  Also, the ability of the university’s environment to make the student feel comfortable, the sense of competence, confidence and professionalism conveyed by the ambience in lectures and tutorials, feeling that the student’s best interest is being served and a feeling that rewards are consistent with the effort put into course works and examinations.

Based on another interesting and illuminating study of Price, Matzdorf, Smith and Agahi (2003), on the issue of what do really students take into account when they decide about a particular university/school to pursue their higher studies, it is suggested that the university/school should facilitate the followings: