The Role of University in Economic Development - The case of Croatia

Higher education, research and innovation play a crucial role in supporting social cohesion, economic growth and global competitiveness. Broader access to higher education by linking with the economy is an opportunity for higher education institutions to make use of a new richness of diverse individual experiences for empowering the development of the local community. Institutions in the higher education try to provide best quality services because they need to compete for their students. Measuring quality of their services is therefore an important task of those institutions that give feedback on the dimensions of quality that need to be taken care of and offers institutions the possibility to gain significant compatitive advantage in knowledge market. Main purpose of this paper is to investigate has the perceptions of the main stakeholders of educational process, students, changed in two waves of measuring their satisfaction (years: 2009 and 2014). Reliable and validated KVALIMETAR measuring instrument has been used to compare perception results, among students. By comparing the results of the research it will be detected critical points in the quality management system as well as to ensure quality guidelines for increasing the level of satisfaction of all stakeholders as well as the overall quality level of the University in the regional economy.