Question

Both local and foreign student’s tuition fees have been increased by the management of universities and made to be paid annually due to the drastic cuts in the Ministry of Education operating budget. Few years ago, the cost of education was cheaper as compared to now. This has resulted in the sudden decline in admission applications to the universities. Mostly applications of less qualified students are enrolled when there is any shortfall in the university’s normal enrolments figures to secure its funding. The increase in the cost of obtaining a university degree has caused legislators, parents, and students to do a needs assessment of the courses offered by the universities. Parents and students are particularly concerned with value for the money they invest in education. They are also interested in the perception fuelled by the numerous media reports about the poor quality of teaching in the universities. They question why faculty members would abandon their work to graduate students and teaching assistants who are so over worked. For this reason, the Legislature’s committee on Higher Education has been tasked to hold “outcomes assessment programs” to determine how well state universities are working towards achieving their core mandate of producing high quality graduates.

           In addition, a huge number of eligible students are expected to gain admission to the universities this year. Key members of the Government have told the universities that they will be expected to absorb additional students within the next decade. Also, because of the budgetary constraints, they have been told not to expect any increase in funding to cater for new facilities such as classrooms and for faculty. In effect, they will be expected to manage with their existing facilities. This is not to say that Government is unaware of the infrastructural deficit and workload of faculties in comparison to universities elsewhere. In fact, Government often cites the example of universities which are able to accommodate extra students by keeping to a time-bound period of four years and reducing the contact hours in some cases. This whole idea has forced a university chancellor to resign and call the problem as “having to do more or better with little.” to his administration.

           One of the first things he did to address these problems was to set up a number of committees made up of faculty and administrators to brainstorm on various topics. Among topics discussed by the committees were: quality education, educational success, graduation rates, success rates in courses (i.e. the percentage passes and failures), teaching, time of graduation, faculty issues, student-issues, facilities, class scheduling, admissions, and classroom space. Each of the committees included faculty in Management, I.T. and Marketing. These committees noted that many of the problems facing the university could be solved with the principles and practices of the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach. These suggestions have appealed to the Vice Chancellor and the academic staff.

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QUESTION BELOW:

Demonstrate how best state universities can benefit from international quality standards using the Japanese Approach to lean and total quality control.

Answer 1

Japanese Approach to lean

Lean has changed the way we look at various problems. It has helped us look at the problems from customer's perspective lookibg at the customer value that is being generated. This implies the value being generated for the customer (student). The role of the studentshas to be both active and passive one. Active in the sense that student motivation, interaction and participation is essential for their development.

Passive in the sense that students receive timelines, assignments and are not in control of the teaching methodoly, study environmente

This specifies the matters tgat should be considered.

Total Quality Management

This method specifies that all the matters in the organization are in the process of continuous improvement. There is brainstorming about on the problems by those responsible and the solution that is unanimous us applied. Continuous evaluation and monitoring is essential for quality control and improvement.