When defining the quality of the service in the field of higher education, it is difficult to define what the client really is, and therefore to assess his satisfaction during the provision of the service. Some consider the student as a client (especially in private schools), others the employer and companies, and most neglect the possibility that the student may become self-employed, or in some cases, entrepreneur, where the final client can be located. in society.
Introduction
This essay tries to establish some important parameters when defining the quality of service regarding higher education. Concepts such as customer satisfaction become ambiguous when considering the student as a customer.
issue
The objective of higher education is to improve the human beings who receive it, both in quantity and quality of knowledge and in the quality of their skills to apply them. The problem is when offering educational services to students as a quality education, it is difficult to decide between meeting the expectations of the student or those of the market that will employ them when they become graduates.
goals
Define parameters in the concept of quality focused on higher education that meets both student and employer expectations.
Justification
It is vitally important for self-improvement to achieve quality development in an area of self-interest in which to perform as a professional. However, many times education covers many aspects that are not of interest to the student and neglects others that are. Similarly, many companies complain that they receive students with insufficient knowledge and skills and then decide to hire only experienced people.
As long as higher education schools do not improve their quality standards, they will continue to generate the unemployed instead of competitive professionals.
Scope and Limits
Perceptions of quality in education tend to be highly subjective and depend on personal interests. From students who have different aspirations, academics who want education to be according to their knowledge, and entrepreneurs who look for trained employees to do their jobs well.
This is why approaches to ensuring quality in higher education can hardly meet everyone's expectations.
In addition, there is a great difference between public and private schools when offering their study plans and services to students, since private schools must always seek to meet the expectations of students to ensure their success.
Development
In the middle of the last century, Edwards Deming revolutionized industrial production in Japan thanks to the introduction of statistical sampling to ensure the quality of the products they marketed. In addition to creating a new philosophy based on this concept of quality.
Contrary to its name, quality was based on a quantitative and not a qualitative process (of course the qualitative aspect is considered, but the strongest basis of this philosophy is in the quantitative part). In sampling and statistics. Either way, this is quite understandable for industrial series production processes.
Deming (cited in González, 2007) proposed fourteen points for quality improvement:
- Create constancy of purpose. This is to improve products or services. This means creating a plan to stay in business whether in the short, medium or long term. Adopting the new philosophy. To be able to enter the new economic era, establishing leadership directed to change. This means that companies that live with the culture of error cannot assure the company of its permanence in the market. Items with defects are not free, and it can be more expensive to correct a mistake than to produce a new item. We know that culture change is not easy, and it takes time, but only top management can achieve it. End dependence on inspection. Inspection is always late, ineffective, and expensive.The new objective of inspection is auditing in order to detect changes in the process and check preventive measures. End the practice of deciding businesses based on prices. The competitiveness of a product cannot be allowed to be based solely on its price, less now that the customer's needs are based on the reliability of the products. Improve the production and service system. This must be done in a constant and permanent way in order to improve quality and productivity, and also reduce costs and in the same way reduce errors and waste in products. Work training. One of the main problems in training and supervision is that no standards have been set to measure what is acceptable work and what is not.Because this standard was only linked to the supervisor's need to obtain a certain quantity of production regardless of their quality. Adopt and institute leadership. Supervision is the responsibility of the administration and must remove the barriers that prevent the worker from carrying out his activities with pride. Eliminate fears. Fear will fade as management, including managers, becomes supportive of their workers and inspires confidence in them. Breaking down barriers between departments. This tells us that between departments they must know each other very widely and know what affects a department. Delete slogan. It is very important to eliminate all kinds of slogans that imply perfection, or a new level of production without proposing how to achieve it. Setting goals,Without a method of reaching them, it will produce more negative than positive effects. Eliminate standards. Normally these numerical standards and goals come to replace leadership. Eliminate barriers that prevent the worker from achieving pride. A worker will not be able to feel proud of her work, but she is aware when she is well and when not. To institute an active education program. It is necessary to train personnel in the use of statistics, in order to incorporate some simple methods so that employees can keep daily control. The training process is simple, and can be done at all levels. Involve all staff in the transformation. The administration will need the guidance of an expert, but this will not assume the responsibility that corresponds to the administration.
These principles established by Deming have been constantly evolving to become norms and certification standards to verify the quality of the different processes within companies.
Regarding the quality of the service, the evaluation is somewhat complicated since they are consumed at the time they are produced. Furthermore, services cannot be separated from their production source, so to verify the quality of service provision, the presence of an inspector (for example) would be required at the same time that the service is provided to the client. This could hinder the process for both the client and the employee providing the service.
The main way to evaluate quality is to verify customer satisfaction as well as their expectation of service. For this there are various tools such as questionnaires, telephone surveys, etc.
Regarding education, the main problem to evaluate quality is to define who the client is.
Quesada (2005) affirms that the student is not the "client" of the educational system, but that it will be the "users" of that graduate who can show satisfaction or dissatisfaction, either by accepting it at a next educational level, or by accepting its services. She also mentions that the student could be considered as the basic raw material of education, or at best as an internal client. The student will always prefer less effort and finish their education as soon as possible, so the quality of education cannot be based on liking the student.
For his part, Williams (2007) highlights the importance of defining students as clients since community colleges (or technical universities) and universities are seen as providers of a marketable service or product. It also suggests that the academic discipline (career) influences more than the type of university when defining the student as a client.
The opposition of positions is evident, especially when a distinction is made between public and private universities. The latter have to consider the student as a client, since their prices are higher and they will only be willing to pay if in exchange they receive a higher quality education that also allows them to have greater and better employment opportunities when they graduate.
Furthermore, private schools must also strongly consider employer companies not only because they will be the beneficiaries of the teaching-learning process, but also because many of them contribute with donations precisely to have better-trained employees in the future.
Public universities are generally financially dependent on the government, and although it is not their only source of income, the payment of enrollment by students is definitely not a considerable part of the economic flow of these institutions.
On the other hand, if we consider the student as a raw material, public universities, when receiving a greater number of applications for admission, may have higher standards for choosing candidates, while private universities, with reduced enrollment, are possible that they lower their standards to allow access to a greater number.
For private schools, Mostafa (2006) concludes that the better students perceive a quality service, the faster and more efficiently quality can be improved, and the more opportunities they have to capitalize on these perceptions.
It is also important for public schools to consider the student as a client since the quality of the education they receive will affect their performance upon graduation and can make the difference between becoming an employee, unemployed or underemployed. If the university fails to generate professionals capable of exercising properly in the workplace, it will be failing the purpose for which it exists.
Emmanuel (2006) finds that the points identified by the students as the most important in the service provided by the instructor are reliability and sensitivity. Additionally, women continually reported that their experiences with instructors do not meet their expectations. The same is true of men, albeit with a slightly higher degree of approval.
The dissatisfaction of the students with regard to their academic expectations can be translated into a lower performance by them, and with this also a decrease in the quality of the educational process and in the result of the same process that is the graduate.
Both public and private schools must consider the student as a client in order to provide a better service and increase the quality of the product (the graduate) that they provide to the final client, which is the employing company.
In addition, another point to consider is missing, since the client is not always the employing company or the educational institution of the next level (in degrees of diplomas, masters and doctorates), but the same student upon graduation can become self-employed. This is the case of many dentists, doctors, lawyers, architects, among other professions. But any graduate of any career can take this path and it is rarely considered when evaluating quality in schools.
There are few study plans that, in addition to concentrating on their academic area, seek to develop other skills of importance for job development, either as employees or self-employed.
Conclusions
The debate between considering the student as client or raw material is important to define the course of the quality evaluation. Student satisfaction cannot be perceived until he becomes a graduate and manages to develop in the world of work, and can range from the time he gets his first job to the moment he retires.
But he is definitely a client and although his immediate satisfaction cannot be sought (which would generally be of the hedonistic type), the process must ensure his satisfaction when he becomes a graduate and joins the productive world.
Bibliography
González, C. (2007, March). Quality according to Edwards Deming. Gestiópolis. Retrieved on April 21, 2007 from
Quesada, G. (2005, September). Quality in Education. Gestiópolis. Retrieved on April 21, 2007 from
Mostafa, M. (2006). A Comparison of SERVQUAL and IP Analysis: Measuring and Improving Service. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 2 (16), 83-104.
Williams, J. (2007). Editorial. Quality in Higher Education, 1 (13), 1-2.
Emanuel, R (2006). Assessing college student perceptions of instructor customer service via the Quality of Instructor Service to Students (QISS) Questionnaire. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 5 (31), 535-549.
