Business Administration and Economics
Increasing competition in the higher education sector is forcing universities to check their service processes and adapt them more specifically to the needs of their students. They otherwise risk seeing their students “migrate to other universities. The first findings of research into this development have already been published and reveal that one quarter of all Bachelor graduates opting to take a Masters degree change university (http://www.his.de/presse/news/ganze_pm?pm_nr=102). Rising student mobility has consequences for university funding, since budgets are increasingly dependent on student and graduate numbers. To secure their financial and human resources, universities are therefore becoming more reliant on high capacity utilisation, which student mobility is making increasingly difficult to achieve.
The Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (KOM) headed by Prof. Reinhard Jung analyses the transferability of different Customer Relationship Management (CRM) instruments to the higher education sector.
It is thought that improved and more individual services tailored to student needs help to bind students to their university long term, not only in the transition to postgraduate programmes but also at alumni level.
In summer 2008, the KOM conducted a survey of service quality at universities. One of the aims of the survey was to investigate the relationship between student satisfaction with servicesand their loyalty to a university. 1,247 business administration and economics students at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Münster and the RWTH Aachen took part in the survey. The results show that the choice of university depends to a high degree on the quality of the services it offers. Around 90% of the students questioned rated service quality as important or very important to their decision.
The particular research interest of the KOMresearch group lies in the development of innovative concepts for a better supply of information to students and enhanced service provision and quality. In their work, the researchers use and transfer the theoretical principles of CRM and also analyse what is known as the “student life cycle to define worthwhile areas for assistance. More information can be found onhttp://www.kom.wiwi.uni-due.de.