Trade-offs between teaching and research activities as antecedents of student satisfaction
Trade-offs between teaching and research activities as antecedents of student satisfaction
Índice
Purpose
Universities must ensure that academic staff is qualified and competent for their job. Indeed, different attempts can be found in the literature measuring their performance and capturing students’ satisfaction. Metrics assessing academic quality are, however, not free of controversy. First, it is difficult to find consensus on the best proxies for academic quality. Second, different patterns are observed when examining teaching and research activities performed by lecturers. While some authors suggest that these two activities are complementing each other and are positively influencing students’ satisfaction, some others argue that rivalry effects are shown. This paper aims at shedding new light on this debate by means of an empirical approach where we examine the relationship between research and teaching quality and its impact on students’ satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
For the purpose of this study, 80 different subjects offered at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) have been considered. Different statistical methodologies have been used to test our hypothesis: test of Mann-Whitney, contingency analysis and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).
Findings
Our results support those studies signalling that current incentive systems at universities might be research-biased, negatively impacting on teaching quality, and consequently on students’ satisfaction. Findings also suggest that there is no relationship between research and teaching quality.
Originality/value
Trade-offs between teaching and research quality in the Spanish university setting are tested. Both teaching and research quality are desirable outcomes. Therefore, studies investigating their collateral effects are necessary. While universities would like their lecturers to excel in both dimensions, very little is known about how to effectively accomplish with this ideal standard.
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higher education, teaching quality, research quality, students’ satisfaction
