Contribution about the quality management in the higher education.

Todericiu, Ramona ; Muscalu, Emanoil ; Titu, Mihail 等

1. INTRODUCTION

It is said that for the Romanian universities implementing the quality management it represents a very important step in changing the institutional culture, what means to create a culture based on good management and excellence. We emphasize the fact that all the concepts and the basic principles of the management of quality can be adapted for the higher education but do not have to be applied like for a firm but have to be adapted, shaped according to the higher education needs. For ISO 9000 the management of quality represents "the ensemble of the activities of the general function of management, which determines the policy in the field of quality, the objectives and responsibilities which are implemented in the system of quality through the means like quality planning, insuring the quality and improving the quality". Starting from this definition we can establish at the university's level elements contained by the orientation and the control which refers to the quality as follows: establishing the policy which refers to quality and the quality's objectives, quality planning, the quality control, insuring the quality and improving the quality. We present as follows some key aspects of the educational process's quality: (Muscalu, 2001)

* "to establish a coherent profile of training for each faculty and to harmonise these profiles inside the university's educational offer;

* to establish the study program's opportunities (majors) and to adapt the university's offer;

* to determine the requests and real demands of the social and economic environment regarding the graduates competences after each study program (major), to correlate them with the university's experience and the international practice (European);

* to elaborate and implement some adequate curricula;

* to implement some criteria and quality evaluation procedures on every segments of the educational process;

* introducing a feedback from the students, alumni and employees, having in view the structure and the quality of training and its improvement".

The management of quality supports the universities to learn there were it is necessary to learn about themselves, to improve and change where it is needed, to interact efficiently with the external environment, national and international. It supposes at the institution's level of higher education the existence of some adequate organizational structures which to favour developing and applying the quality system. The quality management became in the past few years an essential element of development and success, the price being replaced by the quality, from the consumer's point of view. The management of quality essence principles are presented as follows:

* oriented toward the client--the organization has to have as main objective to satisfy the clients and to overcome the client's expectations;

* the leadership--the leaders (clear vision over the future, to establish the objectives, to sustain the values) ascertain the unity between the purpose and the organization's objectives. They are preoccupied with the creation and maintenance inside the internal environment of the employees implication in fulfilling the organization's objectives;

* the employees implication--(the use of the employees talents and skills, the motivation of innovation, creativity) the essence of an organization it is the personnel which through its total devotion allows the skills to be used in the organization's benefit;

* the process approach--the activities and the resources need to be lead as a process for the obtained results to be efficient;

* the systemic approach--in order that an organization to be efficient in reaching its objectives the management, the identification and understanding of the process need to be correlated as a system;

* continuous improvement--(to establish the objectives of change, of improvement, the measurement of the mechanisms efficiency which determine and implement these changes) the organization's objective has to be represented by the continuous improvement of the global performances;

* to base the decision on deeds--the efficient decisions are based on the analyses of the data and information;

* the relationships out of which both parties can benefit--must cultivate a reciprocal relationship of the organization with the suppliers in order to grow the abilities of creating value.

2. GENERAL CONSIDERATION

The specialists say that a quality management system implies in an compolsory way: a politic focused on the client; an adequate organization structure; an efficient documentation; an informational system which can allow to detect and to eliminate the dysfunctions, presented in figure 1. The management system of quality according to the ISO standards "ensure the university's academic management, to understand the task and responsibilities by all the employees and the continuous improvement of the entire activity. The quality systems built like that are created to contribute to the control maintenance, stability and university's capability, to determine them to have a higher level". (Todericiu, 2007)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

3. THE TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

SMQ supposes the same fundamental elements it doesn't matter of the chosen pattern: (Oprean & Tifu, 2008)

* to focus on satisfying the demands and the student's expectations, the employer and the stakeholders;

* in the quality problem, the proactive attitude of the institution's management which it is expressed through creating an adequate environment for performance for all its actions;

* the approach of the quality problem in strategic terms: mission, value, principles, politics, strategy, objectives, etc.

* maintaining under control and improving the institution's processes--to implicate the staff;

* to identify some relevant items of quality and to introduce the mechanisms of internal evaluation of them, the system's documentation in order to provide some objective proves which can create trust.

The specialists in academic management say that, the existence and the development at normal parameters of a system of quality management in a university leads to:

* the efficient and transparent use of the resources which came from the state budget but the extra budgetary resources allocated to the higher education;

* to make a high quality training to be able to respond to the Romanian market's demands;

* to align at the standards and the practice of the European higher education institutions in the field of management of quality, helping directly to the university's prestige and to the development of international partnerships;

* to increase the trust of all the stakeholders in the educational process that it will be satisfied all the explicit and implicit expectations of the educational process, offering credibility and diploma recognition, recognising the students and teachers activity from that higher education institution;

* to determine all the weak spots and to eliminate the errors which can appear in the academic process; (Titu & Oprean, 2007)

4. CONCLUSIONS

The university's system for quality insurance fulfil two important functions. The function of quality management: Has as main purpose the focus on the institution's performance at all levels of its activity and supposes an adequate system of organization for developing the function of quality. The quality management system refers to: the university's management responsibility; the way in which they assume this responsibility through defining and following the strategy, politics and its objectives regarding quality, through insuring the necessary resourced for realising it; to focus all the organization's activities on satisfying the demands and the needs of the external and internal clients; to create inside the institution the environment where the entire staff to be encouraged to performance, to assume the individual responsibilities in order to fulfil its mission and its objectives. The quality insurance function: It purpose is to create the client's trust and to the other external interested parties of the university, having in view the capacity and the organization's openness to satisfying the demands and the expectations. The trust it is based "on one hand evaluating the graduates skills, the research results, the direct assistance for the economic and social environment, reported to the existent standards or with the similar products of other organizations from the field (benchmarking), on the other hand evaluating the quality's internal system from the institution of higher education reported to the existent standards and accepted by the stakeholders".

5. REFERENCES

Muscalu, E. (2001). Universitary Strategies, Eficient Publishing House, Bucharest

Oprean, C. & Jifu, M. (2008). Quality Management in the Economy and Organisation Based on Knowledge, AGIR Publishing House, Bucharest

Jitu, M. & Oprean, C. (2007). Quality Management, University of Pitesti Publishing House, ISBN 978-973-690-646-6, Pitesti

Jitu, M. & Oprean, C. (2007). Strategic Management, University of Pitesti Publishing House, Pitesti

Todericiu, R. (2007). Universitary Management from the European and Globalising Perspective, ULBS Publishing House, Sibiu