Education plays an important role in our society. As the world is rapidly changing, there is a growing need for inspired and well-educated citizens to take on the challenges of the 21st Century. The Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences (Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap, or OCW) therefore has an agenda to improve the quality of Higher Education (HE) in the Netherlands.
This raises some related issues, because, while the quality of the input (new students) is under pressure, there is a need for the quality of bachelor programs to increase. This study seeks to clarify which are the issues, if and where there is misalignment between organisational policies, and the motivation, expectations and experiences of both students and teaching staff, with the aim of finding indications for how to improve the quality of the educational process in Higher Education (HE).

This study therefore seeks to answer the following research question:
What are the motivation, expectations and experiences of students and teaching staff as related to the organisational policies and to what extent are they aligned, in the light of the improvement of quality of the educational process in HE?

To gather insights in to this matter, a case study research (Yin, 2018) was performed at the Hogeschool Utrecht (HU) Institute for Marketing and Commerce (IMC) Commercial Economics (CE) Department: IMC CE.

Education can be seen as a kind of service: intangible, interactive, heterogeneous and perishable. This is complex matter and the principles of service marketing, in which various models are used to get a grip on things, can be applied. According to Kotler, Armstrong, Harris and He (2020) the service delivery process takes place within an imaginary triangle, with at its vertices the organisation, customers and employees. Translated into an educational setting, to the opinion of the researcher,
this equates to the relationship between the organisation, as represented by the 1) organisational policies as endorsed by management, 2) students and 3) teachers. The interaction between teaching staff and students is especially important because that
is where the actual “service encounter” (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990) takes place. In this view, students are not merely “customers” but rather “prosumers” (producers as well as consumers) as they actively participate in the process and
actually develop during the process. It can also be argued that graduates constitute the end result of the educational process. In a performance oriented services environment, the task of management is to facilitate this process and to provide an
optimal context. In this study the triangle of services marketing has been used as a guideline.

In educational corporate policy documents improvement of quality is often discussed, however, a clear definition of quality is seldom given. In this study quality aspects, as related to satisfaction and dissatisfaction, play a central role. As Kotler, Armstrong, Harris and He (2020), Kotler and Fox (1985) and Solomon (2020) stipulate, (services) marketing is about satisfying customer needs and wants
by offering propositions, i.e., combinations of services, products, information, experiences. To achieve this, dedicated market research into customers’ expectations and motivation is imperative.

In the annual National Students Survey (Nationale Studenten Enquête, or NSE) and the Job Satisfaction Survey for Employees (Werkbelevingsonderzoek, or WBO), invariably general questions are asked about respondents’ experiences (what do you
think about this, how do you feel about that?), i.e., the results, but not about underlying expectations, or motivations preceding them. However, as Grönroos (1984) in line with Kotler states, successful services marketing is all about the management of expectations. That is why this research takes the motivation, the expectations and the experiences of both students and teachers as central factors. It endeavours to find similarities and differences, i.e., which are the gaps between the organisational policies, as derived from publications and as implemented by management, and the motivation, expectations and experiences of students and
teachers respectively, with the aim to find out whether or not there is alignment. Research shows (Biggs, 2014; Van Dinten, 2016) that a lack of alignment is detrimental to the quality of a service organisation. As regular students and teaching staff surveys consist of (closed) questions based on certain pre-determined assumptions, some matters remain underexposed or do not come up at all. For this reason, in this research the exploratory Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) as introduced by Flanagan (1954) is used as the central method. In this line of conduct respondents themselves indicate which topics concern them the most. The issues thus identified are further investigated with a combination of semistructured interviews and focus group discussions.

This study is a descriptive research and it makes use of exploratory analysis (Stebbins, 2001), i.e., no hypotheses are defined. The research is qualitative in nature (though CIT has quantitative properties too) and it relies on inductive research methods. At the end of the actual research Covid-19 appearance, which was the reason why the interviews and focus group sessions had to take place using MS Teams.

The research findings reveal that motivation, expectations and experiences of students and teaching staff are similar in many ways. For example, students prefer teachers who are truly interested in them and stimulate interaction, which, in turn, is what faculty prefer most in their job. Students have a preference for teachers with indepth knowledge of their subject, combined with practical work experience, rather than general coaches, while teachers primarily consider themselves to be professionals in their field. Both stakeholder groups mainly prefer dedicated courses over wide ranging projects. Most students, however, turn out to be not intrinsically motivated, while the vast majority of teaching staff is. Substantial gaps exist between the organisational policies, as derived from publications, and the needs and wants of both students and teaching staff. For example, IMC CE policies assume that students are intrinsically motivated and well capable of determining their own individual learning pathways, with teachers
assuming coaching roles. Courses are planned to be phased out of the curriculum and to be replaced by projects. This IMC CE didactical concept is based on the theories of Dochy (2015) and Deci and Ryan (2000a, 2000b).

The misalignments that have been found in this research appear to actually lead to a deterioration of quality. Perhaps the true issues, the real needs and wants of both students and teaching staff are not apparent to IMC CE. Maybe the organisational research is not adequate. Perhaps organisational policies are not evidence based, and motivation, expectations and experiences of the main stakeholder groups are insufficiently taken into account. Maybe this is generally the case at other HEIs too.

In the Temporary Parliamentary Research on Education Innovation Report of 2008, sometimes referred to as the Dijsselbloem Committee Report, the so called “new learning” methods, which have a striking resemblance to Dochy’s HILL (High Impact Learning That Lasts) approach (see subsection 3.4.1), are criticized for a lack of scientific backing, variable outcomes and a risky introduction, as well as the fact that students and teachers were not involved in the initial preparations. These views are corroborated by Scheerens and Kirschner in their publication Progressief Achteruit (2021) (progressively backwards), a critical report by two Dutch emeritus
professors who look back one last time on their field of work, i.e., Educational Organisation and Management respectively Educational Psychology, particularly criticizing personalised learning approaches.

As of 2015 the “basic grant”, a form of student finance for students in the Netherlands, was abolished and replaced by a social loan system. At that time the Ministry of OCW pledged to spend part of the released resources on improving the quality of education. This has resulted in a wave of innovation initiatives pertaining to didactics at HEIs in the Netherlands since then, e.g., introduction of the HILL method at HU. One could ask whether quality has actually been improving as a result.

In this case study it is concluded that IMC CE scores seven out of ten deadly marketing mistakes as defined by Kotler (2004).

Based on the results of this study it is recommended that HEIs further investigate the associated issues and to apply principles of (services) marketing to the educational process, i.e., to thoroughly investigate the needs and wants, the motivation,
expectations and experiences of students and teaching staff. This may lead to adaptation of organisational policies, with a view to optimise alignment within the services triangle, so the “Cycle of Success” (Schlesinger et al., 1991), as explained in section 3.2, is in motion, resulting in the improvement of the quality of education at HEIs in the Netherlands.