An Investigation of Student Satisfaction with an Applied Linguistics Graduate Programme

Abstract

Universities are key institutions that serve to improve society and meet its needs by contributing to scientific research, technology, and social and economic welfare, helping social transformation, equipping individuals with versatile skills, to list but a few. Hence, it is of utmost importance to investigate students’ satisfaction level with universities, for student opinions serve as a very important criterion to evaluate education quality and help them survive in competitive education environment. The existing literature documents several studies investigating student satisfaction in a wide array of areas. Yet, it lacks studies on satisfaction with graduate education at Applied Linguistics. Thus, the current exploratory case study aims at finding out the satisfaction level of MA and PhD students enrolled at the Applied Linguistics programme of a public higher education institution in Turkey. A qualitative inquiry was conducted via individual and semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 13 MA and 6 PhD voluntary students at the programme. The findings gathered from a qualitative content analysis show that the programme was found efficient due to high education quality thanks to well-equipped teaching staff, good services, and encouragement to produce academically. Yet, assessment and evaluation and academic supervision were found as two aspects to be improved. In the end, programme coordinators are provided ways to enhance both education and service quality of similar programmes.