Factors determining the quality of university education: students' views

Introduction. Our paper is focused on studying the determinants of the quality of university education as viewed by the students who represent a key link in the market of educational services. The authors consider the problem of revealing the factors influencing the students' satisfaction with the quality of education and their ranking in relation to the current stage of development of Russian higher education. Materials and Methods. Our research employs traditional methods of empirical analysis: description and classification, semantic interpretation of data, methods of graphical representation of data, ranking, and also content analysis. The empirical basis of this study includes the results of a group survey of students of the Herzen State Pedagogical University (St. Petersburg) and the results of secondary analysis of the research data covering the quality problems of university education. Results. We find that the key determinant of the quality of university education as viewed by the students is the competence of the lecturers, the second important position is occupied by the material and technical environment of the university. This is followed by the organisation of the university practices, university connection with employers, the ramifications and availability of student exchanges. It was revealed that one of the measures necessary to improve the quality of education as proposed by the students might be the involvement of practitioners and more competent lecturers in the educational process. It is determined that the active involvement of students in research work, the use of electronic communication systems in the accompaniment of the educational process and the streamlining of the methodological support of the educational process contribute to the students' satisfaction with the quality of education. Discussion and Conclusions. Our results and the discussion of these results in the scientific and pedagogical community and with representatives of the administrative and managerial staff of higher educational institutions help to identify the main directions in which efforts should be concentrated to improve the quality of university education. In the near future, the foundation of the quality of university education will be the strengthening of the fundamentality of education for the preparation of a student capable of continuously developing in the future, competent both in technical and humanitarian sciences, possessing various interdisciplinary knowledge and transdisciplinary research methods.