Current tendencies in the Romanian public university quality management.

Mihai, Maria Valia ; David, Oana

1. INTRODUCTION

The concept of quality guarantee appeared in the USA during World War II, and was applied in the 1950s in the arms, spatial and nuclear industry. Later on, with the success scored by the ISO 9000 standards, the concept extended to the most diverse sectors of activity. A new client-supplier relationship developed, based on the customer's confidence in his supplier which led to the method of quality system certification.

In Romania, the issue of quality in education was out of the question before 1990. The educational system was centralized and strictly hierarchical, all the measures taken being compulsory at the inferior levels, their declared goal being to improve the learning system.

Important changes occurred after 1990 in the Romanian educational system, particularly the academic one. The most powerful one was that of the private universities that triggered competition among universities, leading to an increase in the number of students, but also to a crisis of budgetary resources for the public higher education institutions. This determined relaxation of state control and higher university autonomy.

The financial resources crisis accelerated the competition among universities, not only within the private sector, but also within the public sector, especially with a view to obtaining extra-budgetary funding resources.

2. CONTAIN PAPER

Central and Eastern European universities applied the accreditation system, following the American model, in order to ensure the minimum quality standards. However, at present, each and every educational institution has to continue its growth, to pursue its way towards competition and excellence and these are not possible without a system of quality management. Therefore, the accreditation and quality management system are complementary and synergic (Cristea, 2001).

The accreditation system establishes whether there are acceptable conditions for the initiation of a study programme, or whether the programme is to be ended as a consequence of deterioration. The moment the programme is authorized, it can benefit from quality management and from a continuous progress.

Ever since 1993, accreditation has been legalized through normative acts that have amended the legislative framework and have made possible the development of an institutional culture of quality in education, as well as of the protection of culture beneficiaries.

The National Council of Academic Evaluation and Accreditation was established, whose aims are to accredit the education suppliers and the study programmes. There are also evaluation commissions which are specialized in different domains. Every five years they assess the academic competence and performance.

A step ahead in orienting the state universities towards the client and the labour market was represented by the implementation of a new budgetary fund repartition basis in 1999.

This new system of fund distribution meant a radical, unprecedented transformation since the financing quota results from two categories of indices: quantitative and qualitative.

If during the first three years of the new type of financing mechanism, i.e. 1999-2001, the funds allocated for higher education institutions were only quantitatively based by the annual budgetary law, i.e. according to the number of students and the equivalent student cost, starting with 2002, the funds are conditioned by the meeting of qualitative indices:

* Percentage of occupied job positions;

* Quota represented by the professor and reader positions from the total teaching jobs;

* Percentage of teaching staff under 35 years of age;

* Ratio of teaching staff who are PhDs.

These are not the only qualitative indices that have been introduced for the distribution of basic finance allocations. Indeed, they measure the premises of quality, not the quality per se. More or less, their effects represent adjusting the procedure of money allocation with costs volume.

The quality of the didactic process is influenced by the quality of other processes or activities that take place in a university: scientific research, publishing, academic management, social services or other university activities.

These aspects have been taken into consideration since 2003, when another 11 indices are added to the initial four.

In 2005 the quality indices are readjusted and revised; they were grouped as follows:

* Teaching staff indices (5 items);

* Indices of the impact of scientific research on the didactic process (3);

* Material basis indices (4);

* University management indices (4).

The quality index notion was introduced in order to include in the university funding methodology an incentive and as a corrective component; thus, if the unitary equivalent student number parameter expresses the volume of training services delivered by the university to its students, by means of the quality indices the premise of the delivered service quality (from a financial perspective) is also taken into account.

The practice of conditioning the allocation of budgetary funding to the achievement of qualitative criteria confirms the present Romanian state policy towards an educational system adjusted to the standards of the EU concerning the academic benchmarks. In this respect, we can assert that, if in 1999-2002 the funding was 100% quantitative-based (equivalent student number), in 2003-2004 the percentage diminished to 87.3%, the difference of 12.7% representing allocation adjustment to qualitative indices; this level reached 15% in 2005 and 20% in 2006 and will continue to raise in the next years, as the tendency is clearly quality oriented, as far as budgetary allocation dimension (Cristea, 2001).

The quality orientation adopted by universities is necessary not only in the matter of accessing budgetary funds; it has an important impact on the increasing number of students able and willing to pay higher fees, since they are aware of the benefits derived from these schooling expenses. (The number of applicants for the entrance examinations and their further evolution represents a direct consequence of the credibility of a university, of its cultural potential, of its interaction with the economic and social context, in a word, it is a positive sign that the academic activity follows the right path).

An essential part in defining the quality of academic institutions has been played by the research of the Dutch academics, members of the "Quality Assurance in HCO" study group, coordinated by Prof. Petra van Dijk from the Polytechnic University of Rotterdam; they were preoccupied with elaborating an international quality assessment guide, and they identified six dimensions of higher education quality:

1. The legal dimension--the extent to which legal regulations and specific higher education procedures are applied;

2. The professional dimension--congruence between teaching staff activity and professional standards specified and accepted for each upper education domain/specialty;

3. The economic dimension--reaching the goals with a certain amount of expenses, such as costs, time, equipment, personnel.

4. The clients' demands--the extent to which services meet the demands, expectancies and needs of potential clients.

5. The labour market--the extent to which higher education institutions are capable of rapid adjustment to the labour market demands;

6. The organizational development--academic institution ability to define and implement the organizational strategies in keeping with the educational system requirements and objectives.

A highly contested notion can be derived from the list of higher education quality dimensions, a notion was mentioned before in this paper, namely, that of client, in other words the beneficiary of the academic services.

According to quality international standards SR ISO 8402-95, the client is defined as "the recipient of a product (material or unsubstantial) delivered by the supplier". Some more recent works on higher education quality provide a more comprehensive meaning for client, i.e. "interested party in achieving a product or service".

The implementation of a quality-oriented strategy is feasible through quality management, notion which in conformity with SR ISO 8402-95 represents "all the activities of the general management function, which determine the quality policy, its objectives and liabilities and which are implemented within the quality system by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality insurance and quality improvement".

Hence, quality management involves the implementation of a quality system through: quality planning, quality control, quality insurance and quality improvement.

Considering the necessity of quality education insurance through a legislative framework which would permit the development of an institutional culture of quality education and the protection of the education-beneficiary, taking into account the need of a change in the present situation when Romania was among the few european countries that do not have an established mechanism of educational quality insurance, the Law concerning the insurance of quality in education was promulgated; the law creates the legislative basis for the implementation of the management of quality in education.

The system of quality insurance of the higher education finds itself in full process of clarification and finality, the legislative framework once being institutionalized at the national level, the mechanisms of quality insurance will determine every higher education institution to become responsible for quality insurance in all activities, at all levels, in conformity with the standards in this domain.

The introduction of quality management represents a major change in the culture of every institution that is why the staff and the established structures are generally reluctant to implementing it. Resistance to change is characteristic not only of higher education institutions, but of all organizations. What is specific to public universities is how 'successful' they prove to be in matters of conservatism and resistance to change. Their traditional structure and systems, developed along centuries, are the main resistance generators (Dinca, 2002).

Alongside the above-mentioned historical conservatism, change resistance in higher education institutions can be connected to other, more "contemporary" causes, such as the way they are organized and managed, for example, aims and objectives which are not clearly conceived by the university management, which leads to obscure results or misunderstandings, lack of perspective and direction so that actions can reach their goals, absence of a coherent action map that can offer alternative solutions, etc.

The introduction of quality management systems requires the development of negotiation skills within the educational system, the improvement of the means capable of reaching consensus of opinion, as far as the suggestions and propositions of the higher education community is concerned. Last, but not least, we need to plan and pursue a system of benchmarks that may assist us in the permanent evaluation of university performance.

3. CONCLUSION

The quality of the higher education is and must be a landmark of the didactic and research activity; it proved to be the central issue in the creation of the European Space of Higher Education.

For Romania, as signatory of Bologna agreement and as member of the European Union, it is obvious that quality can be implemented only by conforming to the standards required by the Higher Education European Space.

4. REFERENCES

Cristea L, University Quality Management, 10th International Symposium "Arternative Economic Strategies", Era, 2001

Cristea L, The quality of education act, Alternative Economic Strategies, Era, 2001

Dinca G, Financial Management and institutional Relationships with Civil Society, UNESCO-CEPEX, Bucuresti, 2002

*** Law 88/2003, concerning the accreditation of higher education institutions and diploma acknowledgement

*** Emergency Decree 75/2005, concerning educational quality insurance