Abstract:
Students’ welfare services in universities entail essential services that aim at
promoting the physical, mental, emotional and social wellbeing of learners at the
university. Quality provision contributes to the wellbeing of the students, improve
learning outcomes, students’ satisfaction and loyalty. The purpose of this study was to
examine the quality of student’s welfare services and how it affects students’ level of
satisfaction in public universities in Kenya and especially at Maasai Mara University.
The objectives of the study were to: Examine the relationship between quality of
catering services and student’s satisfaction; establish the relationship between quality
of health care services and student’s satisfaction; find out the relationship between
quality of guidance and counseling services and students’ satisfaction and; assess the
relationship between quality of sports and recreation services and student’s
satisfaction. The study used mixed-methods research design. The target population
of the study constituted 2640 students in their third year of study and four (4) heads of
sections offering students’ welfare services in the University. The sample size for the
study were 332 third year students and the four (4) heads of sections who were
sampled using both purposive and stratified sampling method. A student’s
questionnaire (SQ) was used to collect data from the students. Interview guides were
used to collect data from the heads of sections. A pilot of the instrument involving
33 students (10.0% of the sample size) from one of the Schools in the University was
used to determine the reliability of the SQ using Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient of
reliability. The school was exempted from the main study. The reliability coefficient
of the SQ was .895. Data from the students’ questionnaire was analyzed
quantitatively by use of descriptive and inferential statistics. Content analysis was used
to analyze data from the section heads. The study found that there was a positive
relationship between quality of students’ welfare services and student satisfaction at
the university. Independently, quality of guidance and counseling services had the
largest contribution on students’ satisfaction [R
2 = .322, F (1, 287) = 137.80, p = .000],
followed by quality of health services [R
2 = .254, F (1, 287) = 99.268, p = .000] and
quality of sports and recreation services [R
2 = .215, F (1, 287) = 78.759, p = .000].
Quality of catering services had the least contribution to students’ satisfaction in the
University [R
2 = .056, F (1, 287) = 17.404, p = .000]. The study concludes that quality
of students’ welfare services was positively and directly related to students’
satisfaction. Improvements in the average quality of guidance and counseling
services, health services, sport and recreation services and catering services was likely
to result to proportionate increase in students’ level of satisfaction in the University.
The study recommends that the University should put more focus on the quality of
guidance and counseling services as they were found to have more impact on
students’ satisfaction.
