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The demand for tertiary education is expected to surpass 265 million in the next 10 years (OECD, 2011). The rapid globalization is not only drives the businesses and cultures across country boundaries, but also the growth of global higher education. To ensure the continuity and sustainability of business model, universities are competing with each other to raise their global profile. Universities are required to put more effort to attract and retain students in this dynamic educational environment. Hence, it is important to provide excellent service to match with students’ expectations and maintain their satisfaction. Student loyalty towards institutions has become the key success factor of the universities (Arambewela & Hall, 2008).
A group of professional lecturers is needed to create value to the private university. Lecturers are important resources in the teaching and learning process. To ensure the continuity of competitive advantage of the university, most of the attention will be focused on the competencies of lecturers. The education process is initiated by qualified lecturers to produce the outcome which is quality education. The academic position of lecturers is gained from teaching, research and commitment to the society (Yunaningsih et al., 2015; Long et al., 2014).
The quality of education depends heavily on the lecturers than by the students’ race, class attendance, previous academic record or family education background. The major factor determines the students’ academic achievement is the lecturers’ competencies (Kang’ahi et al., 2012). Lecturers’ competencies make the lecturers to become more professional than just a lecturer (Yusuf, 2007). Lecturers’ duties and responsibilities are highly reflected in the student performance. In contrast, student performance will be used as one of the determinants for lecturers’ competencies, performance and effectiveness.
The competition among colleges and universities either local or international has brought more pressure to the school’s management in recruiting students. Thus, lecturers’ competencies have become one of the factors in promoting the organization’s images. Lecturers’ competencies have been used to indicate student performance and student satisfaction. Researchers have concluded that student performance derives mainly from the quality of teachers (Hanushek et al., 1998). There is a positive relationship on the effect of teachers’ pedagogical and knowledge on the subject content toward student academic achievement. (Hill et al., 2005).
According to Polat (2011), the higher the perception of the university image, the higher student academic achievement. Higher institutions are greatly focused on producing high performance students in order to increase their institutional image. The lecturers play an important role in delivering universities’ mission. A study on examining the prospective students on their expectation on higher education has been done. The research concluded that there are four major factors that affected students in choosing their higher education institutions. First, the preferred higher education institutions offered the required program. Besides, the result also mentioned that students were expected quality education and perceived it from the derived of the university’s reputation and the quality of the lecturers. The fourth factor was financial assistance that provided by the university (Yusof et al., 2008).
In the dynamic environment of education, many higher institutions are demanding for effective teaching and learning for their students either inside or outside the classroom. Previous studies have widely investigated different types of teaching methods to increase students’ performance. However, the person who delivers the teaching methods has a vital role. Thus, it is crucial to study the lecturers’ competencies and determine which lecturers’ competencies will have high impact to the students’ performance.
The research questions have been identified in order to assist researcher to determine the types of data and ways to collect the data. The research question was addressed as follows: