Student’s concretion learning outcomes, satisfaction and dropout intentions

Student satisfaction has become an increasingly important component of institutional reports as a means of accountability to educational stakeholders. The measures and models for this vary across higher education institutions. Some models try to understand how different perceptions of quality areas impact student satisfaction, while others use more complex relationships that integrate factors such as student learning outcomes and student persistence intentions. This research tries to disentangle the relationship between student satisfaction, involvement and learning outcomes drawing on Astin’s involvement theory (1999), Tinto’s dropout intentions model (1975) and the services marketing literature. This article presents a conceptual framework and findings of four studies testing fragments of the framework. Data sets come from three different countries (Spain, U.S. and Colombia), and various undergraduate programs (Business and Economics, Geography and Nursing). The methodological approach consists of a base questionnaire adapted to the specific contexts and undergraduate programs. The path models are empirically tested using structural equations modeling based on the Partial Least Squares algorithm. Findings suggest that student involvement can be as important as perceived service quality on explaining student’s cognitive learning outcomes, which in turn explains a high percentage of satisfaction and affective learning outcomes. The studies also shed light on the roles of variables such as burnout exhaustion and dropout intentions.