Several studies, especially in the US, reveal that many HEIs have explored and attempted the adoption of industry-based quality frameworks for quality improvement activities. These frameworks are essentially based on concepts of Total Quality. Three such methodologies or approaches to QA that have entered higher education through the business sector are: ( 1 ) Total Quality Management (TQM), (2) ISO 9000 Standards, and (3) the Baldrige Award.
2. 5. 6. 1 Total Quality Management
TQM has entered higher education through the production systems of the corporate world, principally from the manufacturing industry. TQM in essence is about "increasing customer service, improving the quality of goods and services, and
has gained in the industrial sector, through concepts and practical applications advanced by leaders such as Deming and Juran, the philosophy of TQM has been attempted in a number of HEIs in the 1 990s in the US, with varying degrees of success. In UK higher education the adoption of this approach has been slow. However, some studies from the UK report on benefits from a TQM approach similar
to institutions in the US (Kanji, Tambi, & Wallace, 1 999). TQM offers a broad range
of tools and espouses a total systemic approach to quality. It calls for the involvement of all employees of an organisation with the aim of bringing the customer into focus.
Lewis and Smith (1 994) offer a total quality approach as the answer to the opportunities (or threats) of falling standards, the loss of public confidence, the widening gap between learning outcomes for graduates and employer requirements and increasing concerns with access to American higher education. Lewis & Smith ( 1 994) take total quality beyond the traditional notions of quality, which have been expressed as the degree of conformity to a standard. For these scholars, total quality "is a set of philosophy by which management systems can direct the efficient achievement of the objectives of the organisations to ensure customer satisfaction and maximise stakeholder value" (Lewis & Smith, 1 994, p. 29). In short, it could be argued that TQM has evolved from a process using statistical tools to a management philosophy and a structural system.
The National Quality Survey, undertaken III the UK during 1 990, revealed that
colleges had chosen a variety of routes for their QA systems (Sallis & Hingley, 1 99 1 ). Some had embarked on the 'total quality' route, whilst others devised their . own systems. A third group was found to be following the British Standards (BS) 5750 route.
Discussing TQM in the New Zealand polytechnic context, Cliff ( 1 994) observes that "the application of TQM to education institutes has been seen as a way of satisfying the multiple demands of external stakeholders and educationalists working within institutions" (p. 45). This model also adopts a compliance approach where the Ministry of Education, as the main provider of funding to polytechnics, is "mostly concerned with resource allocation utilisation and less with the quality of the educational outcomes or service quality" (Cliff, 1 994, p. 47).
Based on the results of the survey mentioned previously, Sallis and Hingley ( 1 99 1 ) conclude that ''both TQM and B S 5750 may be too complex for colleges who want to
Chapter Two: Literature Review and Conceptual Framework use QA as a means of improving aspects of the delivery of the curriculum". They further note that TQM and BS 5750 are expensive and that TQM is a top-down management-led development. Studies conducted in the US, Malaysia and the UK on the implementation of TQM in HEIs reveal that the role of leadership was the most important factor to promote this methodology in institutions (Kanji et aI., 1 999; Kanji
& Thambi, 1 999). TQM is associated with managerialism where management is often contrasted with leadership. A fully committed Chief Executive Officer (CEO), it is said, is necessary under TQM to make this overly managerial approach work.
TQM has been criticised for its emphasis on processes and not enough on results and a failure to achieve changed attitudes and culture. It is argued that such borrowed concepts cannot be superimposed easily on a higher education system so vastly different in objectives, values and complexities. In a scathing critique, Baldwin ( 1 994) elaborates on the colonisation aspect and states that the "university culture is being colonised by the interrelated cultures of business, industry and advertising" (p. 1 25). The imposition of a "foreign language on a culture is to impose a foreign world view" (Baldwin 1 994, p. 125). Noting the inappropriateness of concepts from the newly emerged quality movement, Baldwin (1 994) further alerts to the danger of the invasion of the quality movement into higher education as follows:
The danger is that the important, timeless issue of how well things are done becomes confused with a specific, recent management system which may well be a passing fad, and ignorant people will assume that universities have never been concerned before with 'quality' . (p. 1 27)
The initial excitement over the promise of TQM as an approach to QA in higher education now appears to be "more subdued and guarded" (Bogue & Hall, 2003 , p .
..
1 83). TQM's fitness for higher education continues to be challenged. TQM's popular discourse which oversells its success stories, its overly prescriptive nature of approaches and the Taylorist view of bureaucratised practices does not fit the vastly different organisational milieu of HE Is. With a distorted version of quality, TQM does not fit the purpose of advancing quality of higher education (Houston, 2007).
2. 5. 6.2 ISO 9000 Standards
The ISO 9000 standards were originally conceived for companIes In the manufacturing sector. Since the 1 990s it has spread to other sectors including the higher education and training sector (Van den Berghe, 1 997). The term ISO 9000 refers to a set of quality m anagement standards. An important feature of ISO 9000
standards is its structure, which gives a consistent set of procedures, elements and requirements that can be applied universally. The standards present a number of requirements for registering a quality system of an organisation for the purpose of QA.
Although the standards are generic, some commentators do not consider all elements of the standard directly applicable to education (Lewis & Smith, 1 994). The standards are not meant to certify the quality of a product or a service or whether one is better than another (Lamprecht, as cited in Izadi, Kashef, & Stadt, 1 996). The standards relate to an organisation's quality system; albeit a documented quality system. The ISO 9000 standards provide both general and contractual agreements for meeting quality requirements. Many countries have adopted the ISO 9000 standards and adopt specific names to it: BS 5750 in Britain, AS 3900 in Australia, Q90 in the US. These national equivalents are essentially the same, although minor changes may occur due to translations. A number of HEIs in the UK and in the US have experimented with ISO standards (lzadi et al. , 1 996; Storey, 1 994; Stott, 1 994). They report mixed results. Debates on the degree of its suitability and applicability in higher education still continue.
The ISO standards can be said to be primarily concerned with descriptive documentation rather than the value of the actions themselves. The detailed nature of documentation required to compile a thorough assessment of what happens in a HEI and what does not happen, can consume a considerable amount of time, energy, effort and expense (Hinchc1iff, 1 994). Higher education cannot afford to expend that time and energy. It would be better off to utilise these energies for activities directly related to the improvement of teaching and learning rather than on meticulous form filling.
2. 5. 6. 3 The Baldrige A ward
The US quality system known as the Baldrige Award uses basic concepts of business excellence. The model consists of criteria that are built upon core values and concepts that reflect "embedded beliefs and behaviours found in high-performing organisations" (NIST, 2004, p. 4). The Baldrige Award criteria provide a model of excellence against an ideal benchmark rather than threshold standards. Organisational conformity with the benchmark is then assessed by experts and reduced to a score out of a possible maximum of one thousand points. The goals of the Baldrige Award are customer satisfaction, customer retention, and gaining market share which corresponds to student satisfaction, student retention, and student recruitment in the
academia (Heizer & Render, as cited in Izadi et aI., 1 996). These goals clearly endorse a market-oriented zeal to maximise profit and stay in business. Higher education is invariably reduced to a business where 'delighting the customer' takes precedence. As was discussed earlier, the fundamental issue with respect to higher education is the inability to precisely identify the customer. HEIs have responsibility to a number of groups. Students as customers distorts the relationship of student with teacher. The notion of a single client group for education is problematic (Winch, 1 996). Furthermore, in education it is not obvious that the immediate clients of education, the students, are consumers in the sense that one who purchases a product is. Education is a much more complex process-oriented activity than a product or a service that is usually considered in a business. Education systems, unlike a business activity, are involved in the creation and transmission of values, whether implicitly or explicitly (Winch, 1 996).
A trial version of the Baldrige Criteria for education was introduced in 1 995 in the United States. Its purpose was to interpret the generic principles and conceptual framework of performance excellence to the specific context of education. This education version of the model can be considered as an attempt to transfer concepts of TQM and performance excellence from the profit-oriented industrial sector to the service sector of education. The organisational uniqueness in HEIs is lost in its attempt to focus on the universal commonality of beliefs and practices and therefore behaviours found in business organisations. The Baldrige Education Criteria has all the hallmarks of situating education in the market place as do other industry-based approaches. It embodies the assumption that educational institutions function competitively In market situations. It predetermines the interrelationships and outcomes of an organisation. An education process can hardly perform in a predetermined model. This award system is, therefore, a glaring example of the
corrosive effects of marketisation on higher education.
2.6 Emerging Themes of Quality Assurance Policy and Practice