Competitiveness In Education

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Education is considered to be one the leading instruments for promoting the economic development. It provides a basis for development, being the foundation of economic and social well-being and the key to increase economic efficiency and social cohesion. The increase of the value and effectiveness of labour helps the poor live better and get out of poverty, through the increase in the productivity and intellectual flexibility of the workforce. Through education, a country’s competitiveness on the global market is ensured, a market dominated today by changing technologies and production methods. In the knowledge era, new discoveries most likely fail to occur with the same speed as they did a few decades ago, even though investments made in…show more content…
Still, even though undergraduate and masters’ students have been the main focus of such research initiatives, PhD students’ rarely become the subjects of research aimed at determining students’ satisfaction with their interaction with the university (Barnes, and Randall, 2012; Campbell, Fuller, and Patrick, 2005; Lariviere, 2012). The current research papers aims at tackling with the PhD students’ satisfaction and what means might be used to connect this type of students and their research outcomes to the economic and social…show more content…
The student-as-customer perspective on how to build sustainable relationship with a university’s students is currently a reality of the higher education institution due to the shift towards the introduction of tuition fees which Williams and Cappuccini-Ansfield (2007) believe that will force universities to act as a ‘service provider’ and be responsive to student requirements. Similarly, Gruber et al. (2010) maintain that the introduction of tuition fees may change students’ approach to education from that of a recipient of a free service to that of a ‘customer’. Further, Watson (2003) maintains that fee-paying students may expect ‘value for money’ and behave more like consumers. Among the positive externalities of adopting the student-as-customer perspective, Hussey and Smith (2010) include the fact that students are less willing to tolerate a low quality product be it the teaching quality, shortage in libraries investments or inappropriate living conditions. Additionally, centring university’s decision on the students’ need is a practice that leads to deeper democratisation, increased accountability and quality improvement (Maringe,

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