Programme Accreditation and Its Relationship to Students’ Satisfaction with The Quality of Educational Services in Some Faculties of Al-Azhar University

The study aimed at identifying the relationship between obtaining programme accreditation in some faculties of Al-Azhar University and students’ satisfaction with the quality of educational services provided. The study used the descriptive approach, and a questionnaire was applied to a sample of (1032) male and female students enrolled in accredited and non-accredited programs by the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation (NAQAA) in two male faculties in Cairo (Education and Agriculture) and two female faculties in Cairo (Humanities and Islamic and Arabic Studies). The sample’s opinions were surveyed about the quality of teaching and learning processes, assessment and examination processes, infrastructure and equipment, and students care and academic counseling. The results of the field study indicated that there were no statistically significant differences at a significance level of 0.05 in the overall satisfaction levels of students with the quality of educational services based on the accreditation variable.
The study of the differences in average student satisfaction across three accredited academic programmes showed that the average student satisfaction in the year following accreditation was greater compared to the average student satisfaction in the previous year for accreditation. It was indicated that the level of satisfaction of students for accredited programmes was higher compared to the satisfaction of students for non-accredited programmes in some sub-indicators, the most important of which are: The availability of course descriptions and the commitment of faculty members to them as well as the suitability of classrooms, holding seminars and honoring of high-achieving students.
Based on these results, the study recommends that efforts and the material and human resources of the faculties of Al-Azhar University seeking to obtain programme accreditation should be directed to procedures that ensure improving the actual quality of the educational process by focusing on raising the level of quality perceived by students instead of focusing on paper procedures and formal aspects.