Student complaint handling procedures and practices play an important role in thernmanagement of higher education, both in public and private domains. Students,rnespecially, those in private higher educational institutions, are believed to be therncustomers, as they are responsible for paying their tuition fees. Handling the complaintsrncoming from students and responding accordingly can help university colleges to convertrnassociated threats into opportunities to perform better than their competitors and drawrncompetitive advantage.rnKeeping this in mind, the study is designed to assess the problems related to handlingrnstudents' complaints and the procedures used by the private University Colleges inrnresponding to such complaints. Additionally, an attempt was made to identifY the majorrnproblems students complain about and their root causes, and the challenges faced by thernmanagement in handling student complaints. Descriptive survey method of study wasrnapplied to investigate the major problems and their causes. A self-administeredrnquestionnaire with the basic issues (as identified through extensive literature review andrnpreliminary investigation with a group of students) related to the nature and types ofrncomplaints was prepared, and administered by the researcher with two groups (studentsrnand management) of respondents. All the responses obtained from respondents werernanalyzed using SPSS software package. Inline with the study objectives, Percentages,rnMeans, Factor, ANOVA, and t-test scores were computed.rnFactor analysis was carried out to group various variables of the study to representrnunidimensionality. In this way, nine dimensions representing various issues related to thernnature of complaints and handling procedure were identified and named appropriately.rnThese dimensions were used as the base for comparing and contrasting the performancernof the three University Colleges over the stated issues. The findings of the research revealrnthat the major focus of many private higher educational institutions is on attracting newrnenrolments than treating effectively the existing students to make them loyal. Moreover,rnproblems have been reported related to the institutional facilities and the staff behaviorrnwhile handling and responding to student's complaints by the management. However,rnmost of the complaints were reported to be associated with non-transparent gradingrnsystem. Finally, the study offers some directions and implications to higher educationrnsector, and provides insight to the management of private higher educational institutionsrnin handling students' complaints.