The Effect of Provided Education Services on Meeting Residents’ Satisfaction in the United Arab Emirates, the Case of Ajman Emirate

Abstract

The UAE is an emerging mature education market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, ambitiously looking forward to being an attractive destination for education’s investors, education’s providers, and regional and international students. But this depends largely on the quality of the education services provided and the residents’ level of satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to identify the level of Ajman’s resident satisfaction on education services and to assess what do the trends over time, tell about the education quality, and residents’ level of satisfaction? To this end, a sample of 992 was selected out of a total of 95,531 household who lived in Ajman and had prior experience in education provided services. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 and AMOS version 22. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis showed an acceptable model fit used to measure residents’ satisfaction both for government and private sector. Findings for Ajman showed that all dimensions of accessibility, reliability, and safety, except for responsiveness dimension of education service in government sector, correlated positively with education service quality, which also had a strong, positive correlation with residents’ satisfaction. For private sector, all of accessibility, reliability, safety and responsiveness dimensions correlated positively with education service quality, which also had a strong positive correlation with residents’ satisfaction. Generally, about 93% of Ajman residents claimed that they were satisfied with education services, where satisfaction level on education services provided by the government sector reached 94% and about 92% in the private sector. Both government and private education had the same highest scoring dimensions, with safety dimension had the highest satisfaction of about 97% for government sector and 96% for private sector. Responsiveness dimension satisfaction was the least with 92% for government sector and quality dimension in private sector was the least with 87%. Findings of this study were expected to support the concerned decision makers for improving education services within the Emirate of Ajman. The UAE being among the top destinations for FDI in the region enhanced this trend, by recently introducing ownership laws to allow for 100% foreign investors ownership of companies outside free zones, together with 10-year residency visa options —a move designed to drive more foreign investment into the country and attract longer term residents. Consequently, more and more private equity firms in the region were growing their education portfolios in light of this climate, with the education sector ranking second in terms of private equity transactions among all sectors in the MENA region. Besides, the cost of living in the UAE continues to rise, and the degree to which this and the introduction of VAT will affect education sector growth is yet to be determined .