Quality Management In Higher Education

There is still no consensus on how best to manage quality within higher education. Thus a variety of approaches have been adopted. . The review identifies a reliance on industrial models. These are applied with only partial success and identified limitations suggest a need for refinement, particularly in relation to the centrality of student learning within higher education.

1.    Introduction: Quality is craving behind the unfolding human civilization.  There are various well-known definitions of quality. Crosby (1979) defines quality as “conformance to requirement” while Juran and Gryna (1980) define quality as “fitness for use”. Deming (1986) defines quality as “a predictable degree of uniformity and dependability at low cost and suited to the market”. It is more towards quality in operation. Many organisations found that the old definition of quality, “the degree of conformance to a standard”, was too narrow. Consequently, they used a new definition of quality in terms of “customer focus”. It is reported that many companies had initially concentrated all their efforts on improving internal processes with little or no regard for the relationships between those processes and the organisation’s ultimate customers (Brigham 1993). This failure to include the customer focus had resulted in companies struggling hard to survive. In the context of higher education, due to the intangible nature of its processes, there is the context of higher education, due to the intangible nature of its processes; there is a considerable discussion on the notions of educational quality (Green 1994 & Harvey 1995). Fincher (1994) describes how quality perspectives have evolved in education over the years by going through a shift from experience to technique, style and finally to process.

 There is still no consensus on how best to measure and manage quality within higher education institutions. Thus a variety of approaches have been adopted. The role of Higher Education in stimulating national economic growth and the value of international students to national economies exacerbates the need to ensure quality within Higher Education. These forces demand that quality assurance processes are both rigorous and transparent, and that quality enhancement initiatives are firmly embedded in any quality management programme.
This is in the general belief that a sound education is the only permanent legacy that parents can pass on to their children to ensure their future. Hallak (1990) emphasized that the quality of the education system depends on the quality of its teachers. Alloy Ejiogu (1990) stated that the quality of education in any given society depend considerably on the number and the quality of its personnel. David (1995) affirmed that the need for administrative training program in education is crucial to the success and quality of the new educational system which currently lacks visible subsystem of administrative training program it therefore becomes highly necessary that school administrators address themselves to those managerial activities that would lead to improvement of performance, thereby leading to academic excellence in schools. In fact, recent surveys have it that members of the public hold the opinion and accuse school administrators of being more interested in their personal welfare of entertaining visitors than in the programs meant for improvement of academic standards of their schools. Teachers are equally being accused of lack of commitment and dedication to duty. Parents are not encouraged enough to participate in the school management and in the same vein, the local schools boards have not been fully responsible for daily administration,

*Swati Jain Academy, Indore
 management and quality control of schools with respect to certification and materials development techniques of teaching and evaluation. Abugbe (2002) affirmed that, a functional educational system is the cry of educationists the world over. This is because, we are inclined to believe that educational advancement and innovations can only come forth from disciplined and committed minds, which operate within an enabling work organizational culture, a culture pervaded by quality consciousness. Therefore, there is an urgent need for an organization wide approach and commitment to quality improvement since no one organization can boast of holding franchise to the development and delivery of quality products/services; many organizations have embraced the total quality management concept as a way of survival. In view of the strategic position of the university education, there is need for the introduction of total quality management that will involve all the stake holders especially the principal, teachers, students, parents and even the community. It must be emphasized that the success of education rests in no small measure on informed planning, efficient organization and dedicated leadership; just as learning cannot take place in a classroom manned by ill-prepared and unskilled teacher, no educational system can rise above the quality of its administration. The diversified nature of our society demands a different, more creative solution to our basic education problem.

2.    Need for the study: Industrial products are finished goods- take them or leave them. Nothing can be done once they are finished. Education has no such finished product, nor even the graduates. Defining quality in education is a massive challenge since it deals with the most sensitive creation on earth –the human being. Service is here and now. They are on the way “to be”. Education only charges the human propensities to evolve and unfold it till the last breath, a process that covers the human journey from ‘womb to tomb’. Human beings continue to learn, and evolve, ‘to be’ Education is goal-oriented. Accordingly, quality of education has been seen with reference to excellence in education, value addition in education, fitness of educational outcome and experience for use conformance of education output to planed goals, specifications and requirements, defect avoidance in education process and meeting or exceeding customer’s expectation of education. Holt (2000) argues, ‘I shall suppose that education is concerned with the development that of minds of the pupils; school produce educated persons who, by virtue of their schooling, to be construe? Commitment to quality makes student proud to learn and work hardly for improvement. Quality improvement is a never ending process. Education quality leads to a prospective future. Hence, insight on quality indices and virtual implementation need to be given top priority and due attention should be paid to the category in the wide range of educational strata e.g. school, university, educational management, and the staff.

3.    Perceptions of quality determine approaches: Since the academic society has not seen any need to define quality, there are relatively few definitions of quality in higher education. The few that exist are of recent date, and often formed within the framework of quality or related approaches. But that does not mean that there are equally few perceptions of quality: in fact, every person with an interest in higher education has a perception of what quality in higher education means. As mentioned above, this perception might never have been put into words, or even be conscious, but it will nevertheless influence our view on how quality development should be conducted. Our perception of quality is one of the most important determinants of our attitudes towards quality work; based on our perception of quality we will be attracted to some approaches, and reject others. Therefore, it is necessary to find out how the staff perceives quality before starting an implementation program.


4.    Garvin´s categories and quality in higher education: Garvin´s (1988) classification of quality concepts can be applied to perceptions of quality in higher education.

5.    Quality:
•    Manufacturing Based
•    Transcendent
•    Productbased
•    Value Based
•    User Based

6.    Managing quality in Higher Education: The literature suggests that there are two main reasons for this. First, ‘quality’ has different meanings for different stakeholders. Within Higher Education there are both internal and external stakeholders who are likely to have disparate or even contradictory definitions of quality. Cheng and Tam (1997:23) suggest therefore that ‘education quality is a rather vague and controversial concept’. Similarly, Pounder (1999:156) argues that quality is a ‘notoriously ambiguous term’ given that it has different meanings to different stakeholders. As a result of the difficulty in defining quality, its measurement and management has unsurprisingly proved to be contentious. Traditionally, external stakeholders have been concerned with quality assurance procedures.  At an international level, Higher Education has expanded substantially over recent decades and has moved up government agendas as a result of a number of factors. These include drivers to increase the knowledge and skills-based economies, participation in Higher Education and social cohesion (OECD, 2006). The focus on quality for external stakeholders is driven by these agendas and focuses predominantly on the measurement of procedures and the extent to which they result in appropriate levels of quality (Jackson, 1996). Quality ‘As’ – accountability, audit and assessment – and suggests that they are concerned with the control of quality and the people who control quality. Particular mechanisms for assurance, such as accreditation and quality audits, are usually imposed by government and other external bodies (McKay and Kember, 1999). Harvey (2005:264) suggests that accountability underpins these processes but under the banner of ‘efficiency and effectiveness’. Many countries have national organisations with responsibility for the management of quality within Higher Education Institutes. These are external stakeholders whose role is predominantly concerned with the measurement and evaluation of institutional quality assurance procedures. Such bodies are concerned broadly with the effectiveness and reliability of the quality assurance systems and processes adopted by institutions in managing quality and academic standards, rather than with identifying changes in practice that might lead to enhancement. In addition, Avdjieva and Wilson (2002) suggest that Institutes are now also required to become learning organisations, where internal stakeholders also interpret and assess the quality of Higher Education provision. The emphasis for internal stakeholders is not only on quality assurance, but also on quality enhancement which aims for an overall increase in the actual quality of teaching and learning, often through more innovative practices (McKay and Kember, 1999). Elton (1992) suggests that quality enhancement focuses on quality ‘Es’: empowerment, enthusiasm, expertise and excellence. Quality enhancement initiatives tend to be less clearly defined and are often more diverse than quality assurance initiatives (McKay and Kember, 1999). In Higher Education, mechanisms adopted by internal stakeholders are likely to include self-evaluation practices and student feedback. As students are viewed as an integral part of the learning process (Wiklund et al., 2003), this type of evaluation tends to be more formative in nature and therefore more likely to lead to continual quality improvement efforts. Furthermore, the involvement of internal stakeholders often results in a culture of quality management being embedded within programmes.


The second reason why quality is difficult to manage in Higher Education is due to the complicated nature of the educational product. Education has been viewed as a system or ‘a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system’ (Deming, 1993:98). The system consists of inputs, transformation processes and outputs. Sahney et al. (2004) advise that in education there are human, physical and financial resource inputs that undergo processes including teaching, learning, research, administration and knowledge transformation. The quality of teaching and learning therefore becomes central in a systems perspective. Ramsden (1992) advises that high quality teaching is fundamentally about high quality learning, which is context-related, uncertain and continuously improvable. Martens and Prosser (1998) add that high quality learning must focus on the development of meaning as characterised by deep learning approaches, rather than on reproduction. However, Yorke (1999) cautions that high quality teaching does not always result in high quality learning or vice versa.

The outputs of the education system can be tangible, intangible or value addition through, for example, examination results, employment, earnings and satisfaction. Harvey (1995) argues, however, that there is no discernible end product of Higher Education as the transformative process continues to make an impact after the completion of Higher Education. Hewitt and Clayton (1999:852) suggest that if the desired output of Higher Education  is viewed as ‘increased capabilities and knowledge as embodied within the transformed student, including an enhanced capability for further learning’ then the system model is appropriate provided there is recognition of the role of the student within all three system components.

Despite their support for viewing education as a system, Sahney et al. (2004) suggest that this creates further difficulty in conceptualising quality because the different component parts of the system have different requirements. The literature suggests that there have been a number of different attempts to articulate the dimensions of quality in Higher Education as Garvin (1987) did for services.
Harvey and Knight (1996) advise that quality as transformative can incorporate the other dimensions to some extent, and the first four dimensions are not necessarily end products themselves. Owlia and Aspinwall (1996) argue that different stakeholders are likely to value the importance of these different dimensions of quality according to their particular motivations and interest and interpret them differently. For example, quality as value for money is likely to be judged differently even by various internal stakeholders. Students may judge value for money according to tuition fees paid versus contact time supplied, whereas a department manager is likely to be more concerned with the effective use of resources in relation to student numbers.
The preceding discussion illustrates that quality in Higher Education is a multi-dimensional construct which is interpreted in different ways by diverse stakeholders. This, in turn, creates complexity in its measurement and management. Accordingly, Cullen et al. (2003) argue that the challenge is to produce a quality management framework that permits the equal expression of legitimate voices, even though they may conflict or compete in some ways. As a result of this complexity, there has been a wide range of approaches adapted to managing quality in Higher Education Institutes. To date, however, efforts to undertake a consolidated review of current practice have been relatively limited. This paper therefore seeks to address this gap in the literature.


7.    Quality management models: TQM – A comprehensive management approach which requires contribution from all towards long-term benefits for those involved and participants in the organisation to work all participants in the organisation to towards long-term benefits for those involved and society as a whole.

EFQM excellence model -Non-prescriptive framework that establishes nine criteria (divided between enablers and results), suitable for any organisation to use to assess progress towards excellence.

Balanced scorecard -Performance/strategic management system which utilises four measurement perspectives: financial; customer; internal process; and learning and growth.

Malcolm Baldridge award – Based on a framework of performance excellence which can be used by organisations to improve performance. Seven categories of criteria: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and results.


ISO 9000 series – International standard for generic quality assurance systems. Concerned with continuous improvement through preventative action. Elements are customer quality and regulatory requirements, and efforts made to enhance customer satisfaction and achieve continuous improvement.

Business process re-engineering - System to enable redesign of business processes, systems and structures to achieve improved performance. It is concerned with change in five components: strategy; processes; technology; organisation; and culture.

SERVQUAL-Instrument designed to measure consumer perceptions and expectations regarding quality of service in five dimensions: reliability; tangibles; responsiveness; assurance and empathy; and to identify where gaps exist.

8.    Conclusion: In education quality has an important matter. Quality Management as a necessary element always has a direct influence on the human improvement. It can be also led to high commitment and sprit in work environment. According to the study majority of secondary school teachers have exhibited Average level of Quality Management in education. However, the percentage of teachers with Above Average level of Quality Management is more than that of teachers with Below Average level of Quality Management. Usually the common observation is that, females’ teachers are more sincere and committed to their work. Always give importance to the quality as such female teachers in the present also study have better perception than male teachers about Quality Management in education. However, it can be suggested that, measures should be taken to see that, male teachers also have better perception of Quality Management and all the activities of the school to promote quality education. It is better for all the teachers of the institutions to be exposed to more quality in education which in turn would influence the perception of teaching. Teachers should be encouraged towards positive aspect of Quality Management and to take active participation to render quality education.