Introduction
Improving the quality of education around the world has become an important activity as many institutions of higher education (colleges and universities) struggle to create better educational opportunities for their current and prospective students. According to various stakeholders in the education sector, quality management has become one of the fundamental components of higher education in the 21st century.
The access to education is no longer an important fundamental component of education as quality education continues to gain centre stage in many educational institutions. Basic education is now deemed insufficient or incomplete if it is not accompanied by quality management in teaching and learning strategies.
Quality education has gained a lot of importance as it is used in the development of excellence, knowledge and expertise which are vital aspects in the growth of an economy (Ali & Shastri, 2009).
Many educational institutions around the world have developed strategies that will be used in the establishment of higher education to ensure that there is quality in education provision. This has mostly been possible as a result of the increasing importance and value placed on leadership and leadership skills within organizations.
Gaining good leaders to be established in the world is only possible when there are developed systems of higher education that will ensure efficiency and effectiveness remain as the sole criteria of evaluating performance (Ali & Shastri, 2009).
The purpose of this study will be to determine what institutions of higher learning have to do so as to achieve quality in their educational objectives, missions, visions, goals and strategies. The study will first discuss the aspect of quality and quality management in a general sense and then focus on how quality management is applied in educational institutions.
Quality Management
Quality management is part of the management strategies that are aimed at achieving quality goals within organizations through the execution of organizational activities such as planning, monitoring, control and quality assurance to ensure quality has been achieved in the business processes and operations of an organization.
Quality management is based on principles such as customer focus, cost leadership, product/service development and the continual improvement of a company’s operations so as to achieve a competitive edge in the market.
The most commonly used quality management technique in organizations is the total quality management (TQM) approach which aims at improving the total quality of business operations within an organization (Cua et al, 2001).
Other approaches that are used in quality management include ISO performance improvement standards (ISO certification), quality management systems, quality function deployment and the six-sigma quality management technique.
The main objectives of all these quality management approaches are to organize the efforts of employees within organizations so that their work performance produces outputs that are of a high quality and standard (Anand et al, 2010).
The main component of quality management is quality which is defined as the degree to which a certain group of intrinsic properties satisfy certain requirements. The term intrinsic properties refer to the innate or permanent properties that exist in certain aspects, matters or situations where these properties meet the expectations of outlined standards or requirements (Dahlgaard et al, 2002).
Quality applies to products, services, business operations, organizational systems and interdependent processes that exist within an organization. Quality within organizations ensures that the products or services developed by organizations have met the requirements set by the organization’s managers or by the ISO standards that are used to determine the quality of an organization’s products (Cummings & Worley, 2008).
The concept of quality is based on positive and dynamic ideas that involve achieving the design of meaningful investments rather than negative aspects that lead to product or service defects. Because quality is both a dynamic and positive idea, it has the ability to continuously evolve making the concept an endless journey that has a deliberate purpose which is that of improving the standards of an organization.
Quality and quality management are both customer-focused approaches that are meant to improve the processes of an organization through the use of interdependent systems such as planning, evaluation, control and quality assurance (Mukhopadhyay, 2005).
The current view of quality management in today’s modern organization is that it is a system made up of interdependent processes that have been linked in a lateral way meant to create a network of internal and external collaboration between suppliers and customers. These interdependent processes have been connected to represent the company’s mission and purpose so that it can be able to achieve its objectives and goals (Bilen, 2010).
Another view of quality management is that the people (employees or workers) of an organization are the tools that give organizations a competitive edge over their rivals. It enables employees to contribute to the overall growth and success of the organization by allowing them to participate in leadership activities, creativity and intelligence building as well as managerial capacity building (Daft & Marcic, 2008).
Quality Management in Education
Quality management in education is a fairly new concept as the main focus of education in the past has been on ensuring that there is a general accessibility to education by all. This focus has however shifted as more and more educational institutions focus on ensuring that there is accessibility to education that is of a high quality.
According to Simin and Xuqing (2005), there are two views that exist on education quality with the first one stating that the quality in educational activities is usually reflected by the quality of students an institution of higher learning is able to churn out to the job market after it has measured their performance against the institutions objectives and goals.
The second view of quality education is based on whether the products offered by educational institutions are able to fully maximize the potential and ability of students so that they can be contributing members of the society. These views propose the idea that education is based on the transformation of students so that they can be contributing members of the society (Sallis, 2002).
Quality in the education sector is therefore measured on the type of input and output processes that take place in educational institutions. The input in education according to Ming and Hualin (2011) refers to teaching and learning strategies that are used to instill various concepts and methodologies to students while output refers to students who have actively been transformed through teaching and learning strategies.
The transformation of students does not only depend on the amount of teaching, training or research they have been given but also on their level of active involvement in the transformation process. This means that the same instructors or teachers working for the same educational institution cannot be able to produce the same cadre of students once the transformational process is over.
Also, the active involvement of students in the transformation process varied in nature as every student has their own individual expectations of the learning exercise and also the type of outcomes that will be gained from once they have undergone educational transformation. Quality in education therefore refers to the type of educational activities that will be used to satisfy the requirements of the society by building and nurturing the intellectual capacity of students (Ming & Hualin, 2011).
Tribus (2010) developed quality principles based on the works of Edwards Deming to reflect quality in education. According to Tribus, the first principle in quality education refers to the redefinition of education where the role of faculty advisors, deans, lecturers and student advisors is translated to reflect quality provision of educational services.
This principle discusses how various educational providers work within a system similar to that of an organization. The job of the faculty head or vice chancellor of the institution is to work on the system so as to constantly improve it continuously with other members of staff. Constant improvement refers to finding better ways of improving the quality of education with institutions of higher learning (Tribus, 2010).
The second principle of quality in education according to Tribus (2010) is that quality improvement is the answer to any educational problem that might be experienced within the educational institution. This principle involves determining the customer’s perceptions of quality and using this perception to develop educational programs that will meet their expectation.
According to Pfeifer (2002), the quality of any process is usually defined by the type of customers included in the transformation process. Quality management views the customer as the person who is next in line to receive a service or purchase a product and quality will therefore depend on the type of process that is used to meet the expectations of the customer. This according to Tribus (2010) gives rise to an internal customer which in the education context refers to students who are customers of course instructors.
The third principle proposed by Tribus (2010) in explaining quality in education is the process over product principle where attention is placed on the process that is used to develop or improve the product.
In the educational context, this principle can be translated to mean that if the student’s performance is to be improved, attention needs to be focused on the teaching or learning process and not on the passing of examinations. This means that the individual potential of students needs to be discovered so that the level of development in the student can be used to develop suitable learning or teaching strategies.
Attention is therefore not focused on evaluating and defining the potential of the student but on developing learning techniques that will be used to develop problem-solving abilities. The application of this principle in the quality management of education in higher education institutions involves both the teacher and the learner working together to improve the educational process of the student (Tribus, 2010).
The fourth principle of quality in education is the perversity principle which involves improving the performance of a system of people, processes, procedures and practices where goals and objectives are developed for the individual parts of the system.
The most commonly used quality management technique in implementing this principle is the management by objectives (MBO) approach where the manager and subordinate agree on what the subordinate needs to accomplish so as to meet organizational targets. In the educational context, the course instructor and student agree on the course objectives that the student needs to achieve for them to be able to excel and meet their educational requirements (Tribus, 2010).
These principles demonstrate quality management in education is depicted in terms of its impact on the students who are targeted by educational programs. Quality management in education targets the improvement of teaching and learning processes so as to transform students during the learning process.
Quality management is therefore an inevitable factor that will be used by institutions of higher education to shape their teaching processes so that they can be able to satisfy the various expectations of stakeholders such as parents, students and the society at large. Quality management will ensure that educational goals and objectives developed by academic institutions have been met and satisfied (Sahney et al, 2004).
Application of Quality Management in Universities
The basic roles and functions of higher education include seeking and cultivating new knowledge that will enable students to engage in the vigorous pursuit of information, providing the right kind of leadership skills that will help individual learners to develop their potential, equip society with competent individuals who will be trained in various professions and also promote equality or social justice to reduce any instances of social and cultural differences that might arise without any form of education.
Higher education in universities and other institutions of learning also seeks to foster teacher student relationships that will instill certain attitudes and values that are needed to develop individuals as well as bring universities/colleges closer to the society at large through the extension of knowledge (Ali & Shastri, 2009).
Quality management in higher education is made up of dimensions such as consistency where the education process seeks to provide quality that is consistent in nature, fitness to purpose where quality meets the customer’s specifications, value for money where students pay for course programs in return for efficiency and effectiveness and transformative educational dimensions where education is viewed as an ongoing process that is meant to transform and empower students.
Quality management in education therefore seeks to incorporate the above-mentioned dimensions to ensure that there is quality higher education (Becket & Brookes, 2008).
To be able to achieve total quality management in higher education, universities and colleges need to first create an awareness of the need for quality improvement in their educational programs. This will involve identifying the various segments of teaching or learning programs that are in need of improvement and then informing the relevant actors of the need for change or improvements.
Once this is done, goals need to be developed and set to ensure that there is a continuous improvement of the educational programs within the institutions of learning. Once the goals have been set, the next step will involve building organizational frameworks and institutions that will be used to achieve the set out goals (Borahan & Ziarati, 2002).
These frameworks will include establishing quality councils and selecting project teams for these councils that will be used to achieve quality goals. These frameworks will then be used for quality training where course instructors and lecturers will be trained on how to provide quality education to students.
The progress made in quality educational improvement will be monitored to note if there are any inconsistencies in the improvement exercise and also any successes in the programs will be recorded for future developments and improvements. Such strategies and steps can be used by institutions of higher learning to improve the quality of education so that students can be able to achieve excellence in their studies (Bogue & Bingham, 2003).
When it comes to determining how these strategies can be used to improve the quality of education, certain aspects need to be considered for quality management to be successful. These aspects include the inputs, processes and outputs that make up the educational system where inputs include the transformational processes used to in part knowledge to students.
Inputs are used within the transformation process to be transformed into outputs that are released back into the external environment. In the context of education, inputs are the human, physical and financial resources needed to make higher educational courses successful and they include students, faculty members and administrators (Hodson & Thomas, 2003).
Processes on the other hand refer to various operations or actions that are used to transform the inputs into outputs that can be measured against set out goals and objectives. The educational process involves a series of actions that are used to train, teach and transform students through educational programs, courses and classroom sessions.
The transformational process within an institution of higher learning involves activities that are meant to disseminate knowledge while at the same time conduct research which will be beneficial to the learning process.
Outputs are the tangible outcomes of the transformational process and they can either be value addition outcomes which include student employment, examination results and earnings or intangible outcomes which include educated people, contributing members of the society and contributing members of research work (Koslowski, 2006).
These three aspects need to be considered when designing quality management systems that will be used to improve education in higher institutions. Once the suitable frameworks have been identified for improving inputs, processes and outputs, extension activities will be developed to apply these frameworks in the real educational context.
Since the educational system does not operate in isolation, the extensional activities have to incorporate certain factors that exist in the external environment such as socio-cultural factors, economic factors, technological and political factors.
These factors need to be considered as quality education ensures that the various problems within society can be solved. Extensional activities will therefore ensure that quality management in education has been directed towards promoting the development of the local community (Pratasavitskaya & Stensaker, 2010).
Conclusion
The purpose of this study has been to assess the concept of quality management in higher educational institutions and also what strategies can be used to achieve quality management in educational programs. The discussion has focused on the aspect of quality in the general context and also in the education setting by identifying the various aspects that are used to improve organizational operations and processes.
Quality in organizations involves ensuring the goods, services and processes used within organizations have met certain requirements or standards such as the ISO quality standards.
Quality in education on the other hand involves transformational processes that will be used to improve the outputs of the learning process. The study has propagated various techniques and steps that educational institutions can use to improve the delivery of educational content to their students.
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