31-01-2013, 02:52 PM
IMPLEMENTATION OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM
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INTRODUCTION
Changes in global educational landscape have forced the institutions of higher learning to revolutionize its operation. The imperatives of the conversion are the stringent requirement of the work force environment and increasing in the supply of the quality work force across continent and countries. On top of that, the competitive business environment drove the stakeholders of the educational sector to demand for more reliable, creative, and multi-skilled & talented work force. These have stipulated the higher education institutions to be more concern on quality educational system.
In today's competitive globalization age, the importance of teaching and learning become even more significant, given the daunting challenges and shortcomings in other aspects of higher learning education such as limited material and human resources, demands from the beneficiaries, globalization, issues of governance and management, etc. The constraints of resources and other impediments are likely to continue for some time to come. Issues of higher education at a national level are intimately linked with overall global conditions. This is not only because of the migration and movement of students and faculty but also because of the impact of economic globalization. These factors have created new challenges. The global context accentuates the business model approach to education and makes the human capital of developing countries more vulnerable to the economic appeal of developed countries’ intensifying brain drain. All these are imperative to the importance of implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) in higher learning institutions.
HISTORY
The history of TQM is traced by Sims and Sims (1995) in the general attempt to build quality products in business that became the focus of interest at the beginning of this century. In Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Taylor applied his method of achieving quality through inspecting the product at the end of the assembly line and the checking on the efficiency of the process. In 1922, G.S. Radford published The Control of Quality in Manufacturing, which reinforced the notion of inspecting products at the end of the process. In 1931, W. A. Shewhart published Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product, which converted statistical methods to manufacturing to standardize performance. Eventually, random sampling eliminated the need to test every manufactured product, and the notion of quality through inspection became streamlined.
FUTURE OUTCOME
TQM is a general management philosophy and set of tools which allow an institution to pursue a definition of quality and a means of attaining quality, with quality being a continuous improvement ascertained by customers’ contentment with the services they receive. TQM can be applied to higher education, but it must be modified to fully recognize some unique aspects of education is a service industry with no visible, tangible “product”.
The development of higher education requires increase funds and even more for its maintenance. The World Bank Document (1994) states, “The development of higher education is correlated with the economic development. Enrolment ratios in higher education average 51% in the countries that belong to high- income countries, compared with 21% in middle- income countries and 6% in low- income countries.” Therefore, the first and foremost task for any nation is to expand its higher education system further in a planned way so as to cover as large a portion of the eligible age group as possible.
For universities, mainly, selling point for a quality programme is the leaner budgets and higher efficiency and productivity inherent in certain quality programmes. This is compounded by decreasing costs, decreasing enrolment totals, downsizing departments, and economic induces slashes in funding form govt. Therefore educational organizations are forced to resort to leaner and meaner approach. Benefits of TQM include heightened employee morale, better teamwork among departments, bridging faculty- staff functions, increased quality from customer viewpoint and continuous development of everyone who is a part of higher education institution.