Implementing Quality Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

In the last decades, several factors have contributed to raising public concern over higher education institutions’ quality, leading to the emergence of quality measurement and improvement devices such as performance indicators, accreditation, programme and institutional assessment and quality audits, and there have been attempts to import models from the private sector into higher education systems and institutions (Sarrico, Rosa, Teixeira and Cardoso, 2010). This has led to the emergence of a debate on the applicability of quality management principles, methodologies and tools to the higher education sector. As reported in the literature on higher education, several voices have been heard about the non-applicability at all of those management theories, especially because they derived from industry and had nothing to do with the higher education ethos (Harvey, 1995; Maassy, 2003; Birnbaum, 2000; Kells, 1995; Pratasavitskaya and Stensaker, 2010). Other authors gave a more nuanced view on the subject, claiming that although higher education institutions were not companies some of the basic principles and tools could be applied as long as they were instruments at the service of institutions and their governance and management boards, subject to the institutions academic mission, goals and strategies (Williams, 1993; Harvey, 1995; Dill, 1995). Although the debate is old, no firm conclusions have been reached so far. It seems, nevertheless, that in Europe, due to the developments on quality assurance that followed the Bologna Declaration, higher education institutions are now being “forced” to implement internal quality assurance systems based on the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG). Apparently the way these systems should be organised and function is not that specified, apart from the need to comply with the seven standards established in the ESG Part I, being up to each institution to define and implement its own quality assurance system in accordance with its mission, goals and institutional culture (Santos, 2011). So maybe this is the time to look again at quality management principles, tools and frameworks and see if they can be of some help to the development of these quality assurance – or management – systems.