Introduction
The SS college located in Chennai suburbs is one of the most prestigious educational facilities that has recently faced a problem of delivering high-quality educational services to its students. While the college just celebrated its 50th anniversary, there were major complaints from students and their parents regarding the fees paid for living in a hostel, the pass percentage on exams, and the overall tuition quality. The one-man committee was assigned to investigate the problem and provide quality improvement recommendations based on the identified problems in service provisions and dissatisfaction expressed by student communities. Therefore, this report provides detailed explanations of how the facility can change current practices to ensure that students and graduates are satisfied with educational services and feel valued on the labor market after graduation.
Proposal for Improvement
Deming Quality Awards
The total quality management (TQM) philosophy suggests that Deming awards are assigned based on the principle of evaluating the contribution of significant process improvements. Nominations were initiated in 1951 in Japan and further guided by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), primarily focusing on quality improvements in the manufacturing field (Kudtarkar, 2015). However, with the proliferation of quality management in other fields of science, Deming awards could be also seen as relevant to the educational area. The reason behind this is the importance of ensuring the high quality of the core curriculum, teaching competence of educational staff, and providing more than satisfactory services required for student wellbeing (Kudtarkar, 2015). Hence, the case of SS college in Chennai could be considered for the TQM application and potential improvements for achieving the Deming award level.
The recommendations for college management in terms of TQM philosophy for identified problems could be summarized as follows. First, it is important considering the aspect of interpersonal relationships between college administration and students to avoid mutual conflicts that result in strikes. The effort could be achieved by engaging students to participate in administrative activities, which are positive to revitalize the overall vision on collaboration process among old employees and their subordinates (Parsazadeh et al., 2018). Second, it is essential to benchmark current college activities with those initiated and successfully accomplished either by Deming Prize awardees or the other successors working in education field. The relevant attempt could be implemented through qualitative inquiries, such as interviews with educational experts, as well as quantitative inquiries, such as the analysis of secondary data (Parsazadeh et al., 2018). Finally, it is paramount to explore strategies and approaches in TQM on the scientific basis to ensure that educational facility could replicate improvement strategies announced by commercial organizations. Eventually, it might help with further transformation of activities without a burden of costs and resource planning natural for the high-level business change projects.
Critical Areas for Improvement
The following five areas for improvement were identified based on the case of SS college in Chennai. The first relates to hostel students, who complained about fees paid for hospitality services being unacceptable. While there is no clear statement about the level of service, it is assumed that students experience problems with communication, supply of water or electricity, as well as internet accessibility. Eventually, it prevents them from succeeding in both personal endeavors and homework assignments, since they are forced to seek for alternative means of communication and search for academic materials using other channels. The second area appeals to the unhappiness of students in a way how college teaching is performed, suggesting that academic staff uses outdated methods of presenting essential educational subjects (Sheshasaayee & Bee, 2017). Alternatively, it could be assumed that there is no constructive feedback on learning progress; hence, students poorly comprehend learning material that is not in line with their educational expectations. Furthermore, there is a problem of interpersonal communication among students themselves, since they blame each other for the pass percentage rates, which might be a consequence of administrative negligence.
The other areas of improvement relate to administrative work and practices maintained in the college. First, it is clearly stated that the majority of educational staff works in the college for more than 20 years, with a principal being employed for 35 years. Taking into account the aspect of bureaucracy and hierarchical management, it means that common business processes applied for teaching and staffing are outdated and are primarily based on individual rather than group thinking (Kudtarkar, 2015). Furthermore, there is a problem with managing customer relationships in terms of parents since the complaints on the quality of teaching were previously received. Considerably, it is important to develop a strategy for change, bearing in mind the previous positive reputation of university, while acknowledging the importance of innovative methods in college education.
Strategic Quality Planning
Based on the analysis of critical areas for improvement, the following ideas are proposed as solutions for identified college issues. On the internal level, it is important to start from resolving the problem of the hostel student strikes through understanding particular problems and needs. It could be achieved by means of additional funding for service provisions or investments from the Ministry of Education. However, such efforts should be justified with particular practices implemented in other educational facilities and follow the ethical guidelines of managing student behaviors.
The second inquiry relates to quality improvements in learning curriculum and teaching materials presented to fellow graduates. For instance, it could be beneficial to collaborate with reputable employers in terms of apprenticeships or internships depending on the student grade, as well as to arrange local university conferences with reputable public speakers or contributors. The idea behind is to create a sense of uniqueness, where each student is proud of being an adept of new efforts in improving quality of teaching, whereas thinking as innovator in its major subject or preference. Combining the aforementioned approaches will allow maintaining facility reputation, in line with future positive feedbacks received from the students on their experience and group assignments.
Apart from meeting individual interests, strategic planning is required in the administrative area. As it was partially mentioned in previous paragraphs, it is critical to revitalize college staff composition in terms of recruiting new, educationally-innovative professors and teachers, and eventually retiring or firing the elderly without the impact on reputation or diginty. While it might consume financial resources in terms of compensation, it is important to think progressively and consider the long-term educational output. For instance, fellow teachers are more capable of keeping in touch with innovative youth thinking, where the use of mobile technologies, remote communication, and informal meetings positively contribute to the overall learning comprehension (Parsazadeh et al., 2018). Alternatively, in terms of TQM principles it might bring a competitive advantage in recruiting new talents and adopting personalized methods of teaching. However, this effort should be appropriately coordinated in terms of costs and resources, suggesting the current uncertainty about opinions voiced both by students and their parents.
Finally, it is recommended that college reapplies commercial thinking principles in promoting new quality standards for education. For instance, it is advised to cooperate with commercial organizations in terms of labor laws and employment standards to ensure that there is no lag in meeting established recruiting and development requirements (Kudtarkar, 2015). It is likely that the best planning approach is benchmarking, where a dedicated project group will focus on investigating how other colleges and educational facilities benefit from employing students for the full-time jobs (Sheshasaayee & Bee, 2017). Meanwhile, commercial thinking for the current case study requires future elaboration on staff development, which might be costly and insufficient given the increased expectations in terms of wages among younger specialists in educational field.
Conclusion
The SS college faces multiple problems that require immediate but thoughtful interventions. The initial effort should be made in interpersonal collaboration between the faculty staff and students to avoid strikes and aggressive self-manifestations. Further, it is reasonable to make changes in administrative sector, where staffing principles are informed by market demand rather than internally outdated policies for hiring and provision of educational content. Finally, new avenues in teaching and lecturing should be explored by the SS college to meet the labor market requirements, and to remain prestigious to successfully attract new talents among staff and students. However, given the complexity of current issues, the application of TQM principles might require several years to be fully adopted and recognized as standard.
References
Kudtarkar, S. (2015). Deming award, a journey towards business excellence [PDF document]. Web.
Parsazadeh, N., Ali, R., & Rezaei, M. (2018). A framework for cooperative and interactive mobile learning to improve online information evaluation skills.Computers & Education, 120, 75-89. Web.
Sheshasaayee, A., & Bee, M. N. (2017). E-learning: Mode to improve the quality of educational system. In S.C. Satapathy et al. (Eds.), Smart computing and informatics (pp. 559-566). Springer.