TQM IN HIGHER EDUCATION – A CONCEPTUAL MODEL TO ACHIEVE EXCELLENCE IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Total Quality Management has become a key management tool that is currently driving today's industry. TQM has been successfully applied in multinational firms/organizations. Institutions of higher learning have now begun to reexamine the educational process and the application of TQM principles in academia. In management education course like MBA, where many concepts like management, leadership, TQM are taught to the students, the possibility of knowing how to apply the concepts is less in many institutions. It is very unfortunate that the place where TQM is taught it is not practiced. When it is not practiced the learning process is at stake. TQM in higher education is a process that involves the institutions adopting a total quality approach to the entire academic process and environment (i.e. attempting to improve the quality of instruction and in the process, the students' meaningful learning in every possible way) so that the needs of the students and those of their employers are best served. It is the never ending pursuit of continuous improvement in the quality of education provided to the students and the satisfaction of the other stakeholders. This paper attempts to apply the TQM concept in higher education and highlights the dimensions of quality in education. The benefits and the challenges of implementing TQM in higher education are discussed in detail. A simple diagrammatic representation guides us from using TQM from industry to education. A conceptual model for applying TQM in MBA is given with descriptions. The paper ends with a brief discussion and conclusion that stress on applying TQM in higher education and MBA in particular since it involves interaction and the satisfaction of the stakeholders their by contributing to the enhancement of quality of education.