EDUCATION SERVICE QUALITY - PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC BUSINESS EDUCATION IN CROATIA

The aim of this paper is gain more insights into dimensions used by business students' evaluation of education service quality in public and private higher education institutions and compare different education service quality components perceived by students as the major stakeholders of higher education. The research was conducted at two higher education institutions: Faculty of Economics in Osijek (EFOS) (public institution) and University of Applied Sciences Baltazar Zapresic (BAK) (private institution). The sample included graduate students: 164 students at EFOS and 202 students at BAK. Adapted SERVQUAL model was used for evaluation of service quality. A data were analyzed using descriptive statistic and IP analysis. Research has shown that public higher education institutions in Croatia are still not much market - oriented in terms of education service quality improvement. Public higher education institutions status in Croatia is still not challenged by the emergence of private sector and market competition. Research gives an analysis of recent trend of privatization of higher education in Croatia from educational service quality perspective and provides a framework and an instrument that can be used to compare private and public higher education institutions. This research is based on only two institutions: one in public and one in private sector of higher education, which is research limitation. Therefore, the results can hardly be generalized to the whole higher education market. Further, education service quality was evaluated only from students' perspective, while there are other stakeholders who significantly contribute to education service quality. Therefore, the future research could include various other stakeholders as well as more institutions.