Total Quality Management in Higher Education

Abstract

Total Quality Management can be summarized as a management system for a customer-focused organization that involves all employees in continual improvement. It uses strategy, data and effective communications to integrate the quality discipline into the culture and activities of the organization. It is a management technique to long-term success through customer satisfaction. . In order to fuel the socio-economic development of the country, higher education is playing a more active role in our country and this requires a paradigm shift in terms of governance and service delivery. Realizing the importance of higher education, a lot of innovative experiments are being done to improve the performance of this sector. Application of TQM concepts is one of such measures, which will go a long way in revolutionizing the higher education system. More recently, the international commission on education in the 21^st century in its report submitted to the UNESCO has also recognized the need for organizing education to foster the development of human beings. The implication of TQM in education then is ensuring quality management in education for the development of all the four planes of living.