Quality in Higher Education

Abstract

concept of quality in higher education by no means a new one. By one set of definitions or another, colleges and universities throughout the world have always held the pursuit of excellence as their primary goal. Why then has the quality approach, developed and popularized in industry, and how increasingly applied in health care and government, receiving so much attention in higher education at this moment? What does this perspective add to the approaches to excellence with which they have long embraced? These are the two primary questions that this book seeks to address. Chapters and contributors include: The New Productivity by Peter F. Drucker; World War n and the Movement by J. M. Juran; The Approach to Higher Education: Context of Concepts for Change by Brent Ruben; The Big Questions in Higher Education Today by L. Edwin Coate; An American Approach to by Marilyn R. Zuckerman and Lewis J. Hatala; Quality hi Higher Education: Critical Issues in Definition and Assessment by Brent Ruben; and Ten Areas for Future Research in Total Management by A. Blanton Godfrey. volume graced with an opening essay by Francis L. Lawrence, president of Rutgers University. Higher education in the public spotlight today due to the many challenges it now faces: rising tuition costs; frustration about a tight job market for graduates; calls for increased faculty productivity; concerns about political correctness; and criticisms regarding the use of grant and research funds, among others. Quality in Higher Education is a particularly timely book that will greatly benefit educators, university administrators, students, and sociologists, and all those who are interested in higher education today.