The following is an extract from the article, "Quality Issues in Higher Education," published in the April 2009 issue of ASQ's Journal of Quality and Participation, Volume 32, Number 1, pp 4 - 5.

"There is much discussion these days about quality in higher education throughout all quarters of the higher education community and outside the community, as well.  Government officials, employers, accrediting agencies, university administrators, institutional researchers, faculty, and faculty development specialists all have something to share concerning this topic.

To engage in meaningful conversation, we must first recognize what we mean when referring to quality.  It is common for people to speak at cross-purposes on this subject when they are using different frameworks for defining quality.  Broadly speaking, there are five popular ways to frame the issue of quality in higher education (and most other settings), as follows.

While regional accrediting agencies are quick to require submittal of information, and often a requirement for approval for growth in terms of new programs, new locations, and online learning offerings, what oversight are they providing for institutions that are furloughing their workforce and closing campuses?

Clemson University is putting employees on furlough.  Does this impact the quality of educational support programs, administrative programs, or academic programs?  Florida State University is closing a campus in Panama City.  Is this action reported to their accrediting agency and is the accrediting body reviewing and approving the closure process?  Are accrediting agencies across the country reviewing and approving cutbacks and furlough processes to ensure quality is not being sacrificed to cost reduction?

In the current accreditation climate, where evaluation is based on highly subjective peer reviews and assessment gurus tout subjective faculty-based assessments instead of rigorous standardized outcome measures that provide nationally comparative data, who is minding the store when institutions decide to start cutting back in personnel, programs, and facilities? 

It was Dr. Joseph Juran, one of the noted quality gurus, who introduced the concept of cross-functional teams to improve the quality of specific work processes.  Juran observed that in many cases, the improvement of a work process required the perspective and involvement of people from more than one organization, since many work processes cross organizational boundaries.  Juran stated that improvements in quality happen project by project, and in no other way.  By this, he was refering to the intentional effort it takes to improve the quality of any type of process.

The March 13, 2009 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education hits the nail right on the head.  In an article entitled "13 Reasons Colleges are in this Mess" the Chronicle identifies the efforts of college lobbyists to kill the work of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education as a key reason for the economic problems many are experiencing in higher education.  "Left unchecked, college costs have continued to rise, along with student debt," states the Chronicle.

At a recent meeting to develop a state-wide strategic plan for higher education, it was decided that the state's goal should be to increase the number of college graduates in the state and that the measure for this goal would be the six year graduation rate of each higher education institution.  While the six year graduation rate is a useful measure for some goals, it is certainly not useful for determining the effectiveness of statewide higher education.

Peer review is a well established and respected process for reviewing scientific research and scholarly work.  Higher education accrediting bodies adopted peer review as an early and genteel approach to ensuring institutional quality, not unlike a review for membership in an exclusive country club.  But as the world of higher education has changed, it is certainly appropriate to ask if peer review is still an adequate approach to ensuring quality.

Quality in education is all about reducing variation to enable students to conform to requirements in learning a body of knowledge.  At the moment, our educational institutions are committed to introducing and maintaining as much variation as possible in terms of teaching methods, selection of text books, definition of curriculum, approaches to advising, approaches to assessment of learning, qualifications of faculy, and almost any other critical dimension of the educational process one can name.  Economic forces have compelled the administrative branches of colleges and universities to implement quality improvement measures in administrative support services to contain escalating costs and meet student expectations that systems will work.  But the heart of the institution - the teaching function - is more elusive when it comes to engaging in quality.

While many institutions and agencies in higher education accept the notion that there is a need for quality improvement, relatively few have embraced the reasoning behind the term continuous quality improvement.  Some institutions are being pushed by accrediting agencies to focus on one big institution-wide improvement initiative instead of working on continuous improvements across the organization.  The underlying distinction seems to be between those institutions that understand how systems work, and those that do not.