One of the Finest Schools in the Country?The Expectations and Views on the Quality of the Education Expressed by the Students Attending the School of Economics and Commercial Law in Gothenburg, Sweden.

摘要

The purpose of our study is to examine if the education given at the School of Economics andCommercial Law at Gothenburg University meets the students’ expectations. Furthermore, wewant examine the students’ view of the education quality and find out what their perception ofquality is. A 2002 evaluation, made by the National Agency for Higher Education in Swedenconcerning education within the field of business economics given at Swedish universities,serves as a background for our study.In order to attain our purpose we chose to do in-depth interviews with students who currentlystudy business economics at C-level. This resulted in twelve interviews divided into fourgroups of three, one group for each field of concentration; accounting, finance, marketing andmanagement and organization. We also deliberately chose students of different ages andbackgrounds and mixed genders.We came to the conclusion that the students’ expectations do play a pivotal role in how theyperceive the quality of the education. The school’s good reputation and name cause manystudents to have very high expectations. The students’ high expectations lead to high demandsthat the school is obliged to fulfill in order for the quality to be perceived well. If the schoolcannot meet the students’ expectations, their view of the education quality is affectednegatively. Most of the respondents seem to be satisfied with the education but everyone hadsuggestions on how to improve it, which helped identify certain deficiencies. For the students,quality is primarily a question of competent teachers with regard to pedagogics.