The Impact of Student-Customer Concept on the Quality of Design Studio Courses in Interior Architecture Education: Academicians’ Perspective

ABSTRACT Today, most of the universities in the world and in Turkiye are working to include quality management systems in their education programs. This study aims to investigate whether the student-customer paradigm has any effect on the quality of design studio courses in interior architecture education. Since the concept of student-customer is mostly adopted in foundation universities, the scope of the study is all lecturers who teach in design studios in interior architecture/interior architecture and environmental design departments of foundation universities in Turkiye. The research methodology is concerned with questionnaire design and measurement, as well as sampling and data collection methods. For the findings of this study, it has been discovered that the quality of interior architecture education in Turkiye is controlled by subjects such as TYYÇ/TQF and faculty guidelines, rather than being focused on student satisfaction and is dependent on these parameters. Furthermore, it is found that a significant number of instructors were claiming the indirect negative impact of the student-customer concept on the course quality by subjective student feedback within the quality system. In addition, the study draws attention to the declining student quality of interior architecture departments and the problem of the total quality system in design studios.