Quality of education: Perceptions and attitudes of academic staff

One of the major concerns of higher education institutions is the quality of the education they provide, as ultimately evaluated by the institutions’ customers, the students. However, the academic staff play a crucial role in delivering quality education. Their attitudes concerning the current direction and their perceptions about the quality of the institutions may influence students’ views. This paper analyses the perceptions and attitudes of academic staff regarding the quality of education in a tertiary education provider. We investigate the different quality dimensions and models for quality measurement as applied to education, which are suggested in the literature by various authors. The key dimensions of measuring education quality such as academic resources, competence, attitude, content, delivery and reliability (Owlia & Aspinwall, 1998) are discussed and redefined. The research methodology used for investigating the perceptions and attitudes of academic staff towards quality of education is a survey based on a questionnaire distributed to a number of lecturers from different programmes of study within the tertiary institution. This exploratory study is designed to assess the academics views, perceptions and attitudes in relation to the redefined quality dimensions and their satisfaction with the quality of education provided.