Higher education and total quality management

Those who advocate the use of total quality management (TQM) in higher education issue strong promises that it will unite campuses, increase employee satisfaction and improve nearly any process that it touches. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence in favor of TQM in universities is mostly anecdotal and surprisingly sparse. The evidence that does exist relates primarily to administrative tasks such as bill collection, check writing, financial aid and registration. But, the truly significant problems facing higher education today relate to the nature of the curriculum, uses of faculty time, how to restrain cost increases, distance learning and the use of technology, cooperative relationships with business, and governance and leadership arrangements. TQM has precious little to say about these things and even erects subtle roadblocks to change in these areas because of its strong emphasis upon meetings, consensus and process over product. Further, it turns out to be a costly approach to decision-making because it is so time-intensive. Thus, while TQM appears to have been quite helpful to some business firms, it is only marginally useful in the rapidly changing, indeed revolutionary, environment that universities inhabit today.