Criteria That Influence The Quality of Higher Education - A Student´s Perspective

Total quality management (TQM) originated in the 1950s to improve the organizational effectiveness and customer satisfaction in the manufacturing industry. TQM, a collection of principles, methods and best practices was aimed reducing waste and increasing the quality of the product. The key to successful implementation of TQM was total participation of all parties involved. Based on the success of TQM in the manufacturing industry, it was implemented in the service industry such has healthcare, human resources, telecommunication and so on. But there were some service categories where the application of TQM was more difficult than others - the field of higher education being one of these categories. The first step in quality assurance is identifying the criteria that determine the quality of the service (i.e. quality of education). There are many tools available in the market. This paper however, attempts to use some simple quality tools such as the cause & effect diagram and the Pareto chart to identify and prioritize those criteria that would have to be targeted to assure an increase in the quality of higher education. This is an important step for the field of higher education because identifying such criteria is half the challenge