Exploring the Predictors of Student Satisfaction: A Case of Undergraduate Business School in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Students have their own connotations related to satisfaction because their perception influences the performance which will provide opportunities to them to get the better quality of life in later stages. The present study planned to ascertain the relationships between infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support and faculty with academic support among business students. The investigation was designed to identify predictor(s) of student satisfaction. A total of 147 students were included in the study which has been selected randomly from the business college of Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The student satisfaction scale was used to gather information. The data have been analyzed by means of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The result of the investigation revealed that (i) all the factors of student satisfaction had positive and significant relationships with each (ii) faculty, infrastructure and campus life were emerged as most potent predictors of students’ satisfaction with academic support and (iii) majority of the students showed the moderate level of satisfaction. The significance and limitation of this investigation are also presented, which will shed the light of hope of other investigators to go ahead with similar kinds of investigation with different methodologies. Further, it is suggested in this investigation that contemporary changes in the higher education systems and varying levels of student satisfaction will surely attract the employer to employ the talented or competent students to enhance the profits of the institutions.

Abstract Students have their own connotations related to satisfaction because their perception influences the performance which will provide opportunities to them to get the better quality of life in later stages. The present study planned to ascertain the relationships between infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support and faculty with academic support among business students. The investigation was designed to identify predictor(s) of student satisfaction. A total of 147 students were included in the study which has been selected randomly from the business college of Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The student satisfaction scale was used to gather information. The data have been analyzed by means of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The result of the investigation revealed that (i) all the factors of student satisfaction had positive and significant relationships with each (ii) faculty, infrastructure and campus life were emerged as most potent predictors of students' satisfaction with academic support and (iii) majority of the students showed the moderate level of satisfaction. The significance and limitation of this investigation are also presented, which will shed the light of hope of other investigators to go ahead with similar kinds of investigation with different methodologies. Further, it is suggested in this investigation that contemporary changes in the higher education systems and varying levels of student satisfaction will surely attract the

Introduction
Now-a-days higher education institutions are recognized as essential service sectors where the most important work is done by keeping in mind the need and expectation of customers to get satisfied, so in such institutions, customers are considered here as students. The higher educations are considered as the producer of well-equipped mind for the purpose of development and growth of the nation and society. Indeed, it is essential by knowing the importance of higher education and its customer, so, these higher education institutions must take students as a serious customer. The Kingdom is also striving hard to provide satisfaction to the subtends by opening various new universities with varied courses to produce competent human resources that will be used in profit making country in the future. Also, government established National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment (NCAAA) in 2004 with an aim to create international standards in all higher education institutions in terms of qualities [1]. Furthermore, NCAAA started National Qualifications Framework for Higher Education in the Kingdom to link with the requirements of market and be on par with other developed international higher educations in terms of excellence. The NCAAA is acting as a policy making and planning in the higher education with Ministry of Higher Education rules and regulations to uplift the quality to push ahead with others [2][3][4]. However, satisfaction of students depends on contributions of NQF and NCAAA and they are working regularly very hard towards the quality to bolster the market by providing competent human resources.
Although, [5] stressed that the rapid expansion of the academic institutions and substantial increases in the cost of education in colleges forced the people to think differently to provide satisfaction to the students for the purpose of survival in a globally competitive era. Also, on the globe, the higher education institutions sought student's opinion or feedback about the varied degree of experiences in relation to their academic life, infrastructure, faculty, campus life and admin./staff support and other variables related to student satisfaction with the help of surveys, questionnaires or words-of-mouth.
Although, satisfaction as the function of expectations and getting experience with the product or service [6][7][8] and henceforth, human beings will be more inclined to get the services again and again due to their satisfaction [9]. However, [9,10] conceptualized student satisfaction in terms of the students' attitude after the academic experience. Though, there are plenty of factors that contribute student satisfaction most importantly financially viable for students, academic and social needs [11]. Whereas, [12] opined student satisfaction as "generally accepted as a short-term attitude resulting from an evaluation of a student's educational experience". Another investigator, [13] conceptualized satisfaction "as the results when actual performance meets or exceeds the student's expectations". In this competitive era, satisfaction is a key factor for the purpose of growth and development in almost all areas of spheres business continuity.
As [14] pointed out that student satisfaction is seen in terms of words-of-mouth, who recommend to friends and others to join the university. Also, [10,15] have similar opinions. It is noted that image or brand has a greater impact on retaining the existing students and attracting potential students [16]. However, [17] observed that facilities related to university attracted the students to join. It is essential that all the employees of the university either high contact or low contact employees must adhere to the principle of quality customer services to provide total student satisfaction [18,19,20].

Review of Literature
Numerous previous researchers conducted research on satisfaction especially among students and estimated that various factors are influencing the satisfaction level of the students to create the image of higher education institutions [4,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Albeit, they all concluded that student satisfaction is an essential pillar for the growth and development of the nation and society and providing employability.
However, [20] conducted a study among male students of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, K.S.A., and reported that classrooms, layout, the overall cleanliness, appearance of buildings and grounds, physical environment and lighting play a significant role in providing students satisfaction.
Dissatisfactions among students observed because of larger class size [30]. The quality of faculty members and their reputation & relationship with students have a greater influence on the reputation of the university that leads to providing satisfaction among students [14,31].
Although, [32] suggested that numerous factors influencing student satisfaction with academic student satisfaction at Asia-Pacific International University and Universitas Advent Indonesia. They revealed that working together as a team, problem-solving skills, developing the ability to plan, communication skills, course content are the factors contributing to student satisfaction. However, [33] opined that faculty knowledge, course content, materials to support students in teaching and teaching methodology are the factors associated with student satisfaction. [34] suggested that course content, faculty, the use of effective learning tools course performance scores are the factors which are affecting student satisfaction.
The scale which are using in this investigation indicates that facilities of the institutions, course content which provides the theoretical and practical knowledge, creating conducive relationship inside & outside, supporting staff and faculty whom they learned the ethics, value etc. Towards the alignment of the satisfaction among students, the below table can be seen as key factors pertaining to satisfaction explored by selected different authors in various countries to promote quality efficiency in the academic institutions.

Objectives of the Study
The current investigation is an attempt to find out the effect of infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support and faculty on academic amongst business students. The objectives are planned as: 1. To determine the relationships between infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support and faculty with academic among business students. 2. To determine the predictors of academic with infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support and faculty amongst business students. 3. To know the level of student satisfaction 4. To provide certain mechanism to improve the degree of satisfaction of the students Hypothesis: in order to justify the result two null hypotheses were formulated as follow: HO 1 : There would not be significant relationship between academic and infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support and faculty among business students. HO 2 : There would not be any predictors within infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff support on academic among business students.

Research Methodology
Sample Sample can be considered as any diminutive number of individuals, events or objects chosen to portray the population in accordance with accepted bylaws. A flawless sample is one that is unbiased and representative of the population. Indeed, sample size is very much essential attributes to carryout empirical investigations that contribute meaningful role in quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data and to obtain scholastic conclusion emanated from available results. Taking into consideration the purpose of the investigation, a sample of 147 students was selected through convenient random sampling technique from College of Business administration, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Only male business students participated in the study. Age categories of participant can be seen below in Table-2: Furthermore, all the respondents were informed in advance that their responses would be used for academic purposes and will never be revealed to any higher officials of the college to maintain the realm of the secrecy.
The criteria chosen to include the sample are that the students considered for this investigation are from various departments of business, different level of their study and age groups.

Tools Used
Student Satisfaction Scale developed by [43] student satisfaction scale applied in this investigation to gather the data. This scale comprises of 30 items with five dimensions namely: infrastructure, campus life, academic, admin./staff support and faculty. Each item rated on the continuum of five-point Likert scale with a weighted score of 1 to 5 (never to always). Moreover, the respondents' age and gender were also obtained with the help of biographical information blank sheet.
The author [44] conceptualized "reliability is to correctness of a measuring instrument which is necessary for the validity". The reliability of the scale was obtained by using SPSS version 16.0 on a sample size of 147 students. It is observed that all five components alpha value appeared more than .7 which are acceptable as mentioned [45]. All the 30 items were obtained in the range of .790 to .886, which indicates the satisfactory reliability of the data. Albeit, [46] postulated that high value of α indicates that all the items included in the scale are consistent in nature. However, [47] stated that construct validity is all about the appropriateness of the attributes in questionnaire. Internal consistency was measured to see the similarity of various items in the questionnaire and correlational measurement was taken into consideration by keeping in mind the design of the investigation and correlation of all the facets was calculated and found significant at.01 level (Ref-table2).

Design of the research
The correlational research design has been instigated to determine the relationships between academic, faculty, infrastructure & campus life. Further, it has been planned to explore the predictor variables which would be responsible for any variations in the dependent variable.

Data Analyses
The SPSS package was taken into consideration to ease the data analysis processes and with the help of it, the output such as mean, sd. and correlations was obtained for the variables studied. Further, Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis was used to verify the outcome of independent variables on dependent variable and justify the hypotheses which have been formulated based on the objectives of the current investigation. Table 4 reflects the overall picture of the variables studied on business students. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between the variables taken for investigation. It is observed a positive correlation between infrastructure and campus life (r=.834, P<.01). Infrastructure and academic exhibited a significant positive correlation (r=.801, P<.01). Also, the results yield a significant positive correlation between infrastructure, admin./staff and faculty (r = .808, P<.01 and r = .810, P<.01) respectively. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between campus life, academic and admin./staff (r=.850, P<.01 and r=.901, P<.01) respectively whereas, a significant positive correlation was obtained between campus life and faculty (r=.899, P<.01). There is a significant positive correlation between academic, admin./staff and faculty. The result yield a significant positive correlation between admin./staff and faculty (r=.914, P<.01) which appeared as one of the most pivotal factors among business schools' students. Moreover, results show that variables such as infrastructure, campus life, admin./staff and faculty observed significant positive correlation with academic at p > .01 level. Therefore, the anticipated null hypothesis HO 1 was not accepted.   Table 5 is describing the model summary of regression analysis on academic of business students and in the first step faculty emerged as the important predictor of academic within the independent variables. The correlation coefficient between independent and dependent variables (R = .866) was found significant. The calculated value of R2 = .749 indicative of linear model as coefficient of determination of academic among business students. It expressed 74.9% variation in academic as dependent variable. The value of F-change (F = 433.388, P< .01) is considered as significant in the academic among business students. In the later step, infrastructure evolved as the predictor of academic within the independent variables. The correlation coefficient between academic and infrastructure along with faculty significant (R = .882). The observed R2 = .778 displayed the linear relationship between academic and infrastructure. It described 77.8% variation in the academic and F-Change (F = 18.835, P< .01) is found significant. In the third step, campus life appeared as the powerful predictor along with faculty and infrastructure. The coefficient between predictor and criterion variable (R=.888), which shows significant linear relationships. The coefficient of determination (R2 = .789) estimated 78.9% variation along with faculty and infrastructure, F-change value is (7.059, P>.01) for academic. The R squared change (.010) accounted for 1.0% variation of campus life with academic. The significant level of F-change partially rejects the planned null hypothesis (H0 2 ). The current investigation is also aligned with the previous studies of providing student satisfaction with varied facilities required to grow personally and professionally [31,41,[48][49][50][51][52].

Results and Discussion
It is observed from the table-6, that the calculated F-ratio for faculty (F = 433.388, P > .01), infrastructure (F = 252.764, P > .01) and campus life (F = 177.953, P > .01) was appeared significant and contributed to the academic among business students. Therefore, henceforth, the planned null hypothesis H0 2 was partially accepted. Notwithstanding, [53] had observed that extracurricular activities, self-confidence, general quality of teaching and careers are drivers of student satisfaction among U.S. business students. Albeit, [54] conducted a comprehensive analysis and observed that students enrolled in clinical degree and humanities were more satisfied than engineering and media studies.

Conclusions
Indeed, student satisfaction is very much essential for the purpose of growth and survivor of higher education holistically and increasing the momentum of the image/brand of the society or nation in the process of achieving sustainability. The present investigation objectives and hypotheses formulated by the investigators have been accomplished and the following conclusions were listed based on findings:  It is observed that all the variables of student satisfaction had found positive relationship with each other.  Faculty, infrastructure, campus life appeared as one of the most powerful predictors of academic support within the student studying in business college.  Most of the students have a moderate level of satisfaction followed by a higher degree of satisfaction and low-level satisfaction.

Limitation and Suggestion of the Investigation
Based on the current investigation, it is crystal clear avenues for future direction towards the researches to integrate competencies and understand individual differences preferences to get the satisfaction during the entire course of undergraduate study. Moreover, present researchers advocated providing few constraints of the investigation which needs to be taken care by the other researchers who intended to pursue similar kinds of the investigation to add certain scholastic value in this contemporary knowledge of study. Furthermore, it is advisable that gender, sample size, nationality, different scale, statistical techniques, religion etc., should be taken into consideration to explore the predictors of undergraduate business student satisfaction. The findings of the current investigation will spark further to go in depth analysis of satisfaction especially undergraduate business school students by using varied research design. It is recommended that management and policy makers must give more attention to instill social, instrumental & terminal values, education, psychological wellbeing and other institutional supports to enhance the level of satisfaction among students studying business [55][56][57]. Whereas, [58] suggested that institution which has positive, friendly, nice, and congenial environment is most likely to influence the level of satisfaction of students. Albeit, it is also suggested to explore qualitative study in this area of investigation to shed more light to understand student satisfaction in a concrete manner.