PRIVATISATION, INSTITUTIONAL AUTONOMY AND THE QUEST FOR QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION

Abstract

The expansion of private higher education and the growing emphasis on institutional autonomy have raised important questions about their influence on educational quality. Students’ satisfaction with institutional facilities, curriculum, faculty, learning environment, and support services provides an important basis for assessing perceived quality in higher education. Therefore, this study examined privatisation, institutional autonomy, and the pursuit of quality in higher education from the perspective of students. The study adopted a causal-comparative or ex post facto research design with a sample of 120 students selected through a multistage sampling technique. The sample was selected from government autonomous, private autonomous, government non-autonomous, and private non-autonomous colleges. Data were collected using the Satisfaction Scale for Students developed by the researcher and analysed using two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), followed by Scheffé’s post hoc test to identify significant differences between the groups. The findings indicate that government colleges were rated more favourably in terms of teaching, infrastructure, curriculum, and faculty quality. Additionally, the public higher education institutions were more responsive to educational needs than private, profit-oriented institutions. The findings further show that students in autonomous colleges reported higher levels of satisfaction with educational quality than those in non-autonomous colleges. This shows a positive contribution of institutional autonomy to educational quality. Based on these findings, the study recommends the establishment of specialised regulatory bodies at both national and state levels to strengthen oversight and monitoring. These bodies should work in coordination with national agencies such as the UGC, NAAC, NBA, and NIEPA to promote effective regulation, accountability, and quality assurance in higher education.