Both local and foreign student’s tuition fees have been increased by the management of universities and…

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.
BEST CHEGG EXPERT.AREADY RATED 100%.
QUESTION BELOW:
Demonstrate how best state universities can benefit from
international quality standards using the Japanese Approach to lean
and total quality control.