Quality Management And Quality Assurance For Academic Education

Knowledge about technical quality and quality management is a most important issue in modern economic life. So in the course of university studies in the technical domain students should get a very comprehensive knowledge. Education in this field must be based on close co-operation between industry and university institutes. On the one side this deepens the understanding for industrial needs at the universities, on the other side enterprises get help from competent academic specialists when problems must be solved in shortest time under the pressure of world wide competition. Keywords: Quality, quality management, higher education, quality system

1.    Introductory Remarks: The origins of quality management and quality assurance began in manufacturing organizations, and many of the tools for quality analysis and improvement were developed for manufacturing problems. Through the 1980s, this manufacturing emphasis dominated the profession. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, business began to recognise the importance of quality service in achieving customer satisfaction and competing in the global marketplace. It is very important to change or make improvement in education. How long an institute or university can survive? If it is just passing the students for B.E. certificates and not able to improve students quality. Students , parents, companies and general public are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way  higher education is provided  some courses are taught  not by faculty but by teaching assistants (particularly workshop practical) faculty does not appear committed to teaching. On a related note, there is total lack of training for professors in pedagogical and learning processes.Univercity students for the other courses have the similar complaints about large course, lack of access to the faculty, and haphazard teaching. However, an overall concern for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) on college campuses could significantly improve engineering education.  

2.    Quality and its Importance: Quality is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, from the chief executive officer to the operators on the production floor. People such as machine operators, assembly workers, ticket agents, nurses, and waitresses are the craftspeople who build quality into products and services.

International Standards of the "ISO 9000 Family of Quality Management Systems Standards" have been developed [1] and are still improved [2] to support organizations to rationalize communication and competitiveness in national, regional and world wide international trade. The whole system has several control loops integrated in each other. Improving the speed and the quality of the information flow, and response characteristic are the main stimuli. With the possibilities of contemporary information technology, data flow management contributes imminent steps against bureaucracy and heavy documentation of the quality system.

*Associate Professor & HOD, Kanpur Institute of Technology,Kanpur.
**MBA Final Year Student, Kanpur Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
The scope and the structure of quality systems and also of quality management standards should be formed on the basis of an integrated system of quality principles as shown in Figure 1.

The general quality management principles are listed as follows:

•    Principle 1. Customer-driven organization: Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should current and future customer needs, meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.
•    Principle 2. Leadership of people: Leaders establish unity of purpose, direction, and the internal environment of the organization. They create the environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization’s objectives.
•    Principle 3. Involvement of people: People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full commitment enables their abilities to be used for the organization’s benefit.
•    Principle 4. Process orientation: A desired result is achieved more efficiently when related resources and activities are managed as a process.
•    Principle 5. Systems approach to management: Identifying, understanding and managing a system of interrelated processes for a given objective contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization.
•    Principal 6. Continuous improvement: Continuous improvement is a permanent objective of the organization.

•    Principle 7. Factual approach to decision making: Effective decisions are based on the logical and intuitive analysis of data and information.
•    Principle 8. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships: Mutually beneficial relationships between the organization and its supplier enhance the ability of both organizations to create value.


 

Figure 1: Applying the Quality Management Principles to the Executive Management
Area of Strategic Planning

3.     The Importance of Quality for Higher Education: The quality of higher education comes nowadays more and more into the point of view of public opinion. The demand for «the quality  of  engineers"  was provoked on the one hand by the industry, where quality management has obtained a great appreciation in general since about twenty years, on the other hand  the universities  themselves made efforts to provide education of high level quality. And last but not least there is also a tendency to shorten the actual length of the studying time which is necessary to get the university diploma.

The application of quality management and the establishing of quality systems for the educational domain at universities were proposed the first time in 1991. The assessment of   the educational quality especially at universities and the application of the feed back for the contents and realization of lectures and courses are very important.

Especially the new ISO 9000 international standards with its orientation to processes gave a useful frame for the development of quality management systems. Figure 2 shows the model that can be used for building up a "Process-based Quality Management System" [3].

Figure 2:  Model of a Process-based Quality Management System

4.     Academic Improvement: The alone faculty or principal can not change needed throughout the engineering education, total leadership must be committed to this movement. TQM can not install like carpet and it is also not “instant pudding”. It is the combined and consistent effort made by each and every individual faculty of the institution.  Faculty can, however lead the change in specific process in college in department in individual teaching method and personal quality. The faculty tends to believe hat the business should not interfere with education. Faculty must have keen interest in education field.       Administrative body continuously keep watch on improving status of education by providing special incentives to the faculty who has given good result in the subject he taught. Further the university system call for improvement quality of teaching; the way engineering institute is rated internationally.

More weighting is given to the practical. The main focus must be on the research paper and and paper presentation on various resent trends in engineering 
by student as well as faculty itself. Better balance must be achieved in total. To faculty, there is a certain comfort in the status quo and in keeping academic debates and dialogues alive.   Faculties tend to prepare themselves if the changes are entered in the world. 
 Curriculum and instruction are the areas most likely to be affected by the CQI process. New degree program; omitting outdated programs; CQI seminars for credit and faculty development opportunities are four additional suggestions to consider when making department or college wide improvement.

Employing new degree programs, specially choosing elective at the final year student must be carefully implemented i.e. student first decide the area he/ she wanted make their future those are their specialization area. Another CQI related terms i.e. Recruit five to six faculty in the college each from different department and form a quality team. Making it possible for the faculty member to continue there won educational experience and new idea to improve teaching and other areas of CQI. Formal and informal learning opportunities (seminar, workshop, conferences) across colleges involving faculty and student both to improve presentation skills and research presentation. It gives college chance to celebrate each other work. This could be done on departmental level as well

5.   Quality Management for the Educational Domain of Universities: To assess the quality of an educational activity is a difficult task in general.  Normally it is only possible to use indirect indicators. When the quality of an educational process has to be assessed it must be done by mutual co-ordination between the teacher and the student. The criteria is the creation of the teaching contents, the range and topicality of which will be regulated and influenced by various mechanisms, as well as the given knowledge level of the students. In the point of view of this paper is above all how to assess the quality of the knowledge of the students and to assess the mediation of the studying material on the basis of responsible verification.

It is presupposed that lectures are the basis of the education at the university. In addition to the selection of the studying material and the way of lecturing, the mediation of the studying material is most important for the quality of a teaching process. The mediation of the studying material is determined by the disposition of the lecturer. The verification of this process, which is only based on the results of examinations, includes also the disposition of the students and therefore this way is not correct. If for instance the course of lectures is conscientiously prepared and given and also the belonging text book is easily accessible but the student is badly prepared because of various reasons, which are not influenced by the teaching process, then the realized correction of the process on the basis of these results would have been false.

On the other hand badly prepared and badly presented courses of lectures can hardly lead to an appropriate improvement of the knowledge level. If at the examination a considerable difference between the expected knowledge level and the real one is detected a correction is necessary. In order to be guaranteed the permanent balanced quality is necessary to go from the verbal definition of the status to the exact one as well as the implementation of the available quantification scheme. The solution at the Department for Interchangeable Manufacturing and Industrial Metrology is based on two sub solutions:

1. Continual examination of the student’s knowledge.
2. Evaluation of the lecture which is realized by the students.

These two sub solutions are evaluated in the form of a so-called "lecture matrix" and corrections are derived from this matrix.

The students have the opportunity to evaluate the lecture using the student's questionnaire. This includes the following questions:

- the treatment of the students,
- the selection of the studying material,
- the way of the lecture,
- the mediation of the contents and
- the selection of the examination questions.

These questions are answered by the students by ranking with marks between 1 and 5 and there is also the possibility to criticize verbally. This questionnaire is evaluated statistically for each course of lectures.

6.    Summarization and Concluding Remarks: Customer satisfaction is a main concern of quality management and general efforts to achieve quality in industrial but also public organizations. The customers of Universities as institutions for higher education are the various organizations where the young academics will be engaged after they have finished their studies. Feedback about the quality of the former students can be gained by continuous contact with industrial and public organizations. 

The described solution for the problem of evaluating educational processes is now successfully applied in the quality management system at a Department of Vienna University of Technology since more than five years on the basis of continuous improvement and close contact with industry.   The most elementary and most important point is that “the person who interested in TQM (CQI) to be the person who possess the interest in ability to develop vision of  personal as well as organization quality..”

The way to achieve CQI in organization is worked in few college and university however in individual department college or university can not able to achieve total quality management. It needs the effort of all the individual effort. CQI is horizon as a way of future education system . it has implement from personal to public level. Some significant and positive result will give the best result to implement TQM.