- A shift is needed from traditional management culture to a total quality culture
Pakistan, a developing nation that is striving to break free from the indomitable clutches of mediocrity, extremism, corruption and injustice, needs to incorporate a more structural approach to its education system; more so than ever now. The education systems, that are the ‘breeding grounds’ for our posterity, are in need of the long term solution that Total Quality Management has to offer in order to ensure quality education throughout the country.
Total Quality Management (TQM) as an administration and management model, with its accentuation on authority, strategy, teamwork, thorough examination and self-appraisal, has a general message. Furthermore, it has consistently been a go-to school of thought for the long term solutions as opposed to a transient fix. It is more so required in our constantly evolving era of versatile and liberal education systems. Academic institutions are dependent on the quality of education they provide to the students and, indirectly, the society. Despite the fact that the TQM philosophy was fabricated for the manufacturing sector; educationalists, policy makers, scholars, and researchers all around the world are showing their sincere interest towards it.
Total Quality Management is not only a philosophy but also a set of guide lines and regulations for ongoing improvements for the services and/or products offered to customers. It can easily be applied to the education sector. This has been done in the case of the UK, Canada and the USA, where educational authorities are attempting to impose quality standards through the development of strict accountability systems, competency-based education and testing, and mandated national curricular content and goals.
Dr Joseph Juran, one of the pioneers of Total Quality Management theories, developed a strategic quality approach which is a three-part process, which can be applied to the staff of educational institutions, at different levels making their own unique contributions to quality improvement. In the first step there is a quality planning by providing training to all the faculty and staff members on quality education design. In the second phase, checking quality against pre-set standards, and applying remedial efforts in case of differences, is suggested. The last part is to improve quality. It is the process in “which it is necessary to reduce the waste and chronic defects and achieve a new improved quality zone.” In this we apply the four strategies of repairing, refining, renovation and reinvention.
According to Dr.Juran and Frank. M. Gryna in their book ‘Quality Planning and Analysis’, the quality of education became the critical factor for famous universities (higher education) at present and forced the completely different approach to the university management. The implementation of Juran Trilogy model can be easily applied by both schools and universities, by means of surveys and student/ staff evaluation forms, to deduce and improve on education quality performance and students’ satisfaction.
According to Dr.Juran and Frank. M. Gryna in their book ‘Quality Planning and Analysis’, the quality of education became the critical factor for famous universities
TQM system, with a focus on continuous growth and improvement, provides a rather exhilarating learning platform for students and teachers both, rather than a “good-enough” learning environment. However, it must not be taken for granted that there are no challenges or barriers in implementing TQM in education. Some educators believe that philosophy which is developed for business may not be appropriate for service organisation like educational institutions.
Mark G. Brown, the co-author of the book “Why TQM fails and what to do about it” discussed that lack of top management commitment affects TQM efforts negatively, which is one of the main reasons of their failure.TQM tends to put more emphasizes on non-academic activities such as check writing or a country-wide curriculum or teaching set-up, rather than the core academic activities. There is also resistance from the faculty members as it (TQM) impedes their authority and freedom. The lack of compelling communication channels; the issue in estimating advanced education organisations results and the co-existence of different purposes and destinations for Higher Education foundations likewise act as obstructions to TQM’s application.
The theoretical solution to these issues, and thus the successful implantation can occur if a quality culture is created, i.e. a shift is needed from traditional management culture to a total quality culture. Quality culture can encourage the TQM standards like constant enhancement, open correspondence; reality based critical thinking and basic leadership, and so on. Furthermore, educational institutions should adopt a more “student-oriented” approach. Long gone are the days of stereotypical ‘teacher-student’ relationships.
