Is TQM Appropriate for the Classroom?

During the past few years the con cept of Total Quality Management (TQM) has come to American higher education. Any number of colleges are now experimenting with or imple menting the programs. In fact, a 1992 ar ticle in U.S. News reported that 61 percent of the college presidents that the magazine surveyed were either using total quality management or considering adopting it. TQM originated during the 1930s with theorists such as W. Edwards Deming (1982). The system was put into practice by Japanese industry after World War II. The success of the Japanese in manufac turing quality products caused many American companies to investigate TQM and eventually embrace it. It is chiefly the U.S. corporate sector that is urging higher education to adopt the system, through of fering grants, workshops, and training ses sions to interested colleges and universi ties (Mangan 1992).