Total quality management implementation in higher education: concerns and challenges faced by the faculty

Abstract

It has now be a major concern among the Public Universities in Malaysia to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) to ensure quality of higher education. TQM initiatives include the implementation of ISO 9001:2000, Total Quality Organization and Total Quality Education Models, and more recently the Quality Assurance (QA) exercise. The QA consists of nine criteria and standards, which was imposed by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia to inculcate the quality culture in Malaysia’s public universities. In the Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development UTM, effort has been made to utilize the criteria and standard of the QA as a mean to achieve total quality in managing its Marketing Program. This paper presents the concerns and challenges the faculty lives through in implementing the QA system onto the Marketing Program. The most significant concerns are: To Run the Program Effectively - Execution of the QA and ISO 9001:2000 QMS; Difficulties to measure a complex range of performance indicators – Program specification, Process performance, Process outputs, Service Standard and Quality of Graduates; The misfit of the focus between the University’s concerns and the focus of QA; The trade off between creativity and rigidity in teaching and students’ assessment; Cohesive teamwork and synergy amongst academic staff of different panels (specialization) and different faculties with the program specification; The intricacy between external decisions on students enrolment and resources capability of the Faculty; Limited involvement of SH; and Resources, Human resource development and Research. This paper presented the obstacles and offering recommendations to improve the QA implementation for the public universities in Malaysia.