Can student satisfaction rise as education quality declines? A comparative analysis of higher education students’ satisfaction in times of disruption

While student satisfaction has long been at the centre of higher education research, there is limited research examining how satisfaction changes during times of disruption. In this study, we analyse how various dimensions of higher education students’ satisfaction changed during a major disruption, based on an online survey of 7490 higher education students from six countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the United States) during COVID-19. The analysis revealed that satisfaction with non-academic aspects decreased during this period, as expected, but surprisingly students’ reported satisfaction with academic aspects generally held, and in some cases increased. We develop a modified version of expectation confirmation theory, based on the concept of ‘adaptative expectations’, to explain our results. The results indicate that although student satisfaction is often used as an indicator of institutional and teaching quality, this can be misleading, as environmental factors unrelated to higher education institutions’ actions affect student satisfaction.