Educational Quality and Satisfaction of Student Needs at a Triple-Border University in Latin America: Pandemic Versus Post-pandemic

This longitudinal study compares the indices of educational quality and satisfaction of student needs between 2020 and 2023, evaluating the advances or setbacks of virtual education according to the perception of 322 students of a university located on the border of Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. The methodology includes validated questionnaires applied to students of Political Science, Education and Humanities, Engineering, Business Management, Architecture and Medical Sciences, with a descriptive non-experimental design and quantitative data. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the results showed that both service quality (total value = 0.006) and satisfaction and behavioral intention (total value = 0.004) were significantly lower at the statistical significance level of 0.05, accepting the non-parametric alternative hypotheses. These findings demonstrate the impact of the health crisis on the perception of distance higher education and provide valuable information for improving quality and satisfaction in this context.