Abstract

Introduction: Understanding how the students' expectations about the process of educational services is being met, plays an important role in improving the quality education and academic services in the higher learning institutes; because by determining the probable gaps between the expectations and perceptions of students, necessary actions can be undertaken to enhance the quality of educational services. Purpose: This study intends to determine the quality gap in educational services provided to the paramedical students in Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2010. Method: The study was a cross sectional research that used standard SERVQUAL questionnaire to collect data from paramedical students of the school of Allied Medical Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. A total of 135 responses were analyzed to identify the quality gap in educational services. Findings: Results show that there is a negative quality gap in all five dimensions of quality educational services (empathy, physical, responsiveness, assurance and confidence). The maximum and minimum mean of quality gap observed in the dimension of empathy and assurance was -1.57 and -1.31 respectively. Moreover, a statisti-cally significant difference was observed between the five dimensions of educational services in the quality gap (p<0.001). Conclusion: According to the results, it is recommended that in order to reduce the gap and improve the quality of educational services, attention should be paid to all aspects of service quality, particularly to the empathy dimension. It is also suggested that proper planning is needed to better serve employees and increase their communication skills, in order to help reduce the educational quality gap. Originality/value: The concept of service quality assessment through SERVQUAL is a relatively new effort among Iranian universities, and there is lack of previous published literature using this method to assess the quality of educational services. Thus, this paper can be used as a guide for universities and academic institutes who seek to identify the educational quality gap in order to improve upon it.