Lean Model of Quality Management in Higher Education

Introduction

Researchers exposed that the colleges and universities needed to maintain good culture in making greater impact over the learners and corporate firms. Diverse challenges have been cited by researchers owing to the concern of dimensional variety since that very often results into complexity. Lean model of quality management that is known for its efficiency and ease of handling issues came up as a best practice. The principle underlying this approach is based on eliminating wasteful process steps and keeping them bear minimum with the result of improvement in value and efficiency. The chapter is based on a review of literature. The principles of a systematic review as recommended by Jesson, Matheson, and Lacy (2011) have been adopted. First, a research plan is developed comprising the research questions that are of interest in answering, the keywords, and a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Researchers, while examining the quality of education, revealed the significance of balancing approach (Dorrell G. Floyd, 2017) in higher education to creating quality matching the requirements of corporate firms. Observation further revealed (Don Martin, 2012) that worthy culture creates Graduates to find global acceptance. Implication therefore lays in the approach to evolving quality education since that helps the Institution creating sustainability, growth and reputation. Focus is directed on the status of research into Higher Education benefits in employments in order to identify promising areas for future study. Public viewpoints undoubtedly indicate that, higher education leads to empowerment, and that is a process of strengthening individuals, organizations and communities (VVOB, 2017) so they get more control over their own situations and environments. Quality education is also believed to be a crucial factor in combating poverty and inequality in society. Often said is the other fact that, peaceful environment promotes national development (Clark, 2013) and highly educated people more often have a peaceful attitude in life than their lower counterparts (Komatsu, 2017) do. Maintaining harmony (Narendran, 2012) and perpetually pursuing to enhance economy (Berger & Fisher, 2013) is the attitude exhibited by highly educated class of people. Higher education fosters focused knowledge of subject matter and Institutions look for its utility at workplace. Buller (2014) has cited that higher education should be regarded as neither a purely public nor a purely private good but as a benefit, that combines features of both. On the academic side, people speak often about how college improves the quality of life for its graduates at the same time that it benefits the larger community. He further states that a new bimodal view of higher education is becoming increasingly important at the start of the twenty-first century: one that sees the goal of universities as developing “the whole person” and another that sees it as largely or even exclusively in terms of job training. Institutions (Stephenson, 1992) have reported challenges with realization that the rapid expansion of knowledge particularly in business, engineering and science cannot be accommodated within the confines of conventional timetables. Higher student / staff ratios, which are encouraging many institutions to rethink their teaching strategies, larger numbers of what used to be called ‘non-standard students', causing institutions to introduce more flexible ways of responding to different student needs. Bok (2017) cites that colleges and universities need to reconfigure graduate programs to better prepare aspiring professors for teaching. As late as two or three generations ago, majorities of new Ph.D.’s, at least in the better graduate programs, found positions where research was primary, either in major universities, industry or government. Today, however, many Ph.D.’s find employment in colleges that are chiefly devoted to teaching or work as adjunct instructors and are not expected to do research. Many improvement opportunities justify Lean implementation in universities. Problems may appear in understanding the need of Lean, as humans in general are reluctant to change, but good follow-up in establishing an adequate strategy can contribute to the success of Lean implementation. This chapter reveals the advantages of lean model and the strategies used in designing and implementing quality management for higher education.