Chinese adolescent student service quality and experience in an international tertiary education system.

Abstract

After the 2008 Olympics is concluded and commentators and journalists internationally begin the process of evaluating Beijing's performance as the host city, one of the primary elements to be analyzed will be the quality of visitor service provided by more than 70,000 volunteers. Given the large number Chinese students who have chosen a Western tertiary education over the past ten years, it is reasonable to assume that many of these students will volunteer their services, bringing a perspective on Western standards of service quality gained through exposure to the models of their host high school and university. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the experiences of 160 Chinese students at an Australian tertiary institution, and concludes that their impressions of quality are formed by a range of service dimensions. Analysis of the scope, scale, and importance of the these dimensions is used to generate a portfolio of quality indicators that are likely feature strongly in the 2008 Beijing Olympics model of volunteer service delivery.