Using Cause and Effect Analysis to Improve the Quality of University Education: A Case Study

Abstract

Higher education forms the backbone of any country's economic performance and sustainable development, university institutions in Iraq tried to adopt university quality improvement systems at the forefront of these systems is the international standard (ISO9001) with its various versions, and quality assurance system in higher education according the standards of the of association of Arab Universities, and Iraqi standards, However, the picture was not completed due to the circumstances that faced the development movement for higher education in Iraq, Therefore, it has become necessary for research and studies to be directed towards activating methods of improving university quality, and searching for the most important tools that contribute to implementing this improvement successfully,, That improving the performance of university education in general depends on the level of performance of the comprehensive university educational process, and Good selection and use of tools to improve their quality, On this basis, the main objective of the research was (improving the performance of the comprehensive university educational process in Iraqi colleges using: cause-and-effect analysis technique), Whereas private colleges (the private sector) are more in need of such improvement, so a sample of private colleges in Basra is chosen as an area of study, For this reason, a sample of private colleges in Basra was chosen as a field of study, the research problem was summarized by bellow question: (to what extent can cause and effect analysis be used to determine the fundamental causes affecting the overall university educational process, and improve its performance in private colleges? Whereas the sample of the study is one college (Alknooz university college), So use the deductive approach which depend on (Analysis, discussion and logical reasoning) in its theoretical aspect), and the case study approach in the field study side, The literature of the university educational process was used to collect theoretical information, And developed a special checklist to collect field data related to the evaluation of the causes of the problem, the research reached a set of results, the most important of which is to identify the most fundamental reasons for the problem of improving the educational process in all private colleges in Basra.