Quality management: the gap between words and actions.

Smoleanu, Oana ; Popescu, Carmen

1. INTRODUCTION

The authors of this paper want to present the problems confronting the Romanian educational system in its attempt to implement quality assurance measures. We also propose possible solutions to these problems.

At the end of the 20th century the radical political changes in Europe and the enlargement of the European Union facilitated the free circulation of people looking for a better job or work opportunity. Practising a skilled job abroad involves acknowledging the value or quality of education and of the study documents attesting the skills and expertise acquired. Commonly accepted criteria of educational performance and its assessment basis needed to be introduced in all the EU countries. If in Western Europe, e.g. the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc., educational reforms were initiated in the 1980s, in Romania, they started being debated after the meeting of the Ministers of Education in Berlin in 2003. The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (EAQA) agreed on developing standards, guidelines and procedures for quality assurance and accreditation agencies. In 2005, in Bergen, the proposals were approved.

Quality assurance aims to build confidence in the society members that the national educational system takes the right decisions so as to spend the public money in an efficient way. As in many European countries, in Romania, the university was seen in the 19th and 20th centuries as 'a place of excellence'. The idea of universities planning their performance and determining the quality parameters of their activity, of demonstrating its results was considered a mission impossible in the past since nobody, except the university professors could be examples of scientific and human quality. After the 1989 events, Romania was faced with a rapid expansion of universities, both public and private, but all with poor financing possibilities. As a result, the quality of education was modest, far from the standards of other European countries. The 1999 Bologna reforms created the European higher education area and made academic degree and quality assurance standards more comparable and compatible throughout Europe. But it was only in 2005 that the Romanian Ministry of Education (Order 3928) really considered the issue of higher education quality assurance services, and as late as 2009, namely this year, that it initiated some actions, for example, the programme entitled 'Higher education quality assurance in the European context: system and institutional academic quality management development'. This year, sixteen universities are to be evaluated by the Romanian Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance (RAHEQA). The main goal of the project is to develop a competitive European quality culture based on managerial competence meant to contribute to an efficient implementation of policies, methodologies, instruments, and standards in the domain of quality at the levels of the entire educational system and particularly of the higher education institutions. The project has as one of its goals 'to create a central data-basis containing benchmarks, standards and indicators that will provide empirical information about the quality of the programmes at the institutional level'. From this, we can draw the conclusion that educational reform in the spirit of the European conferences is at the beginning of its implementation in Romania and that a lot of time has been wasted due to various factors that will be explained in what follows. But first, we will focus on the new place the university should occupy, namely as an important centre in close cooperation with similar partners on the service market, as a prerequisite for reform implementation.

2. THE UNIVERSITY AND ITS PARTNERS

Considering the present day market, the link between the academic environment and the economic one is vital. It is a connection where the university performance and economic efficiency can meet. Faculty graduates need be equipped with the knowledge and skills required by employers; moreover, they will have to demonstrate their commitment to the clients' needs. Quality management studies (Bratianu, 2000; Iosifescu, 2000; Oprean, 2002) hold that good results are considered accidental if activities are not systematically and systemically tackled. Common practices can assure only a minimally acceptable level of performance; good practices result from tested procedures that in time determined a steady improvement of the performance. The cooperation between the university and the economic environment is possible on condition the leaders of higher education institutions, as well as the entire academic staff, are aware and agree on the 'external client' role played by economic organizations. The more these services see to the clients' (internal and external) needs and interests, the higher quality they will assure. Hence, if certain universities disregard or ignore the cooperation with the economic environment, sooner or later, they will realize that only the universities that have understood the mutual advantages of such cooperation will benefit from it. These universities will have more clients hired by firms that need their expertise. At the moment, the Romanian economic agents provide inconsistent feedback as to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the graduates' level of adjustment and to their capacity of meeting the workplace exigencies. There is no systematic collection of data in this respect, which is indicative of a lack of real communication and initiative between the two parties.

Although the performance assessment techniques are known, even if benchmarking (SR EN ISO 9004-4:1998) is being implemented at the academic level, the previous steps that actually lead to a higher quality performance are being neglected or tackled in an inconsistent manner. Quality management is not a series of documents, carefully drafted, nor is it a slogan, as it happens in most Romanian universities, the Petroleum and Gas University of Ploiesti (PGU) being no exception in this respect.

According to John Jay Bonstingl (2002), there are four pillars of quality management: first, 'synergistic relationships, second, continuous improvement and self-evaluation, third, a system of ongoing process (individual students and teachers are less to blame for failure than the system in which they work) and fourth, leadership (the success of quality management is the responsibility of top management)'. Each and every of these components is important otherwise quality assurance is nothing but words.

If we analyze these components, we have to admit that the Romanian system of education is deficient and its quality management is based on just one pillar: teaching staff continually adjusting their performance, improving their teaching style, cooperating with the students. The other components are almost absent: the educational system is permanently shaken by the political intervention (each new minister of education introduces other 'reforms'), top management is "assured" by people who are not qualified, and teamwork is yet to be learned.

3. OBSTACLES IN QUALITY MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

There are theoretical, cultural and material quality assurance obstacles in the Romanian higher education. Theoretical impediments are represented by insufficient information and skills of the individuals responsible with quality assurance. In most cases, the strategies and mechanisms that have to be implemented as quality assurance conditions are considered as goals in themselves. For instance, there is the idea that quality can be obtained by simply identifying the lack of conformity and by correcting the mistakes (coercive actions included), disregarding the possibility of prevention actions. Next, the quality management objectives are not correlated with short, medium or long term strategies. Thus, an artificial confidence is being built on the basis of documents, including quality certificates, to the detriment of managerial decisions and actions meant to really meet the quality standards.

The cultural obstacles are counterproductive attitudes and types of behavior entailed by insufficient and inadequate professional training of the academic staff, quality management being considered the exclusive responsibility or 'duty' of the executive board, e.g. the rector, and deputy rectors. Other obstacles are represented by the importance given to quantitative objectives, to the detriment of the qualitative ones and, last, but not least, deficiencies in communication, resulting in university departments not been informed in matters of quality norms and plans.

From a material point of view, there are resources inadequately budgeted at both the central and local levels. Similarly, lack or insufficient financial resources for educational investments manifest themselves in scarcity of information, technology equipment and other materials necessary in the educational and research process. Consequently, the national, international and European projects which could contribute to educational management quality assurance cannot be implemented on a regular basis and systemically. Other factors that impede on educational reform implementation are insufficient teaching space, ICT facilities, lack of up-to-date books and teaching support in libraries, to name just a few. However, what constitutes the major difficulty in making the reforms operational is the undemocratic type of social relations at the level of higher education institutions: 'power structures based on "status groups" which are deeply hierarchical' (Fairclough, 2006) and 'power distance' (Hofstede, 2004) is relatively high.

4. CONCLUSIONS AND SOLUTIONS

Certainly, there are quality assurance strategies in every Romanian university, but they do not correspond to changes in procedures, values and actions; they are present only in documents and at the declarative level. Even if, here and there, some bottom-up initiatives try to make things move, the responsible on top prevents them from happening.

This situation also applies to our university, to its policy of quality management which consists of a series of promises. The distance between them and the real actions is still huge and it requires the collective effort of all actors to cover it.

In our view, more precise and targeted quality management principles are to be considered. For example, at each faculty an evaluation scheme should exist to review and monitor the quality of its study programmes. The director of study should be responsible for the design and delivery of each study programme, assisted by a committee with specific educational competence, e.g. the teaching committee. In the same line, for each programme there should be a qualification profile clearly defining the aims and objectives. Curriculum design and student assessment should reflect this profile.

Students should be involved in the feedback loops both for the overall curriculum and for individual courses.

Consideration of the views of alumni should be part of the feedback process. Fundamental structural changes to a curriculum should be discussed with colleagues within the PGU. Importantly, experts from other similar universities should be invited to participate in quality evaluations organised by our university. The appointment of professors with a high international standing in research is crucial to the aim of educating students in a research environment, especially in providing an international dimension. Last, but not least, PGU should recognise the advantages of recruiting students with motivation and high academic ability, therefore admission of students to graduate programmes should be selective in order to ensure quality and improvement of the learning and research processes.

To conclude, we should mention that we are aware of the limitations of this article: it is too descriptive in nature, it lacks the scientific accuracy of statistical data and it suffers from a tendency of overgeneralization. Even if we presented the reality of the PGU, we know that a lot of other similar institutions face the same difficulties from the various national conferences we participated in. This is why, given the stage of quality management implementation in the Romanian universities, we hope we have offered a realistic picture of the present situation.

5. REFERENCES

Atanasiu, G. (2000). Higher Education Quality in the Globalizing Context. In Bratianu, C. (coord.), Higher Education Quality Management, Editura"Vasile Goldis" University Press, Arad

Bonstingl, J. J. (1992). The Quality Revolution in Education. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Dragulanescu D. & Dragulanescu M. (2004). Service Quality management. Ed.AGIR, Bucharest

Fairclough, N. (2006). Language and Globalisation. London and New York. Routledge, p 86, ISBN 0-203-59376-6

Hofstede, G. (2004). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. MCGraw-Hill, New York ISBN 0-07-143959-5;

Iosifescu S. (2000). Quality management, second edition, Ed. Economica, Bucuresti

Oprean C-tin, K. (2002). Quality management. Editura Universitatii "L. Blaga", Sibiu, ISBN 973-739-034-2

Stanciu I. (2003). Total Quality Management. Ed. Cartea Universitara, Bucuresti