Factor Analysis of Students’ Satisfaction with Academic Courses

This research aimed to distinguish the factors affecting student satisfaction at selected Seventh-day Adventist higher educational institutions in Southeast Asia. Knowing these factors could help educational leaders to thoroughly plan their strategies and better understand the determinants of student satisfaction. A questionnaire was distributed to student respondents at two higher educational institutions in the Southern Asia-Pacific region, namely Asia-Pacific International University (AIU) in Thailand and Universitas Advent Indonesia (UNAI) in Indonesia. Exploratory factor analysis was used to distinguish the underlying dimensions that drive student satisfaction and to analyze dimensions of academic courses. A sampling adequacy test yielded a value of 0.590, which was > 0.50; hence, the sample size was adequate for the analysis. The commonalities of all variables surpassed .40, and consequently, were helpful in the model. The results showed that several factors affected student satisfaction with academic courses at AIU and UNAI. The courses that helped them were those which developed problem-solving skills, ability to work together in teams, communication skills, the ability to plan, and those that were organized in a systematic way.