Industry’s Perspective of Quality of Education in HEIs

Quality of Education in Higher Educational Institutes (HIEs)

Ajay Bhagwat | OBE Data Coach | [email protected]

Executive Summary

The author attempts to find some answers from how “quality” has been practiced by the industry, for the current challenges faced by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in regards with quality of education and employability of students.

Author's views are based on analytics and case study conducted by a few educators using inpods (a technology platform for better educational and employment outcomes) as an analytical tool for designing, mapping, assessing, analyzing and improving educational and employment outcomes.

Quality – as practiced by the industry

Right from the early days of my career, I have been fascinated by the work of 3 quality gurus – Dr. Deming, Dr. Shingo and Peter Drucker.

When I was managing a large manufacturing plant’s production unit, I used their wisdom to manage the quality of products and machine tools by forming a culture of quality of everything that requires to maintain high standards of work culture. Later in my career, when I was managing a large team of software quality assurance professionals, I used their wisdom again, but a little differently and I could experience its usefulness in a different work culture too.

When I think about quality of education in HEIs, and then when I think about the challenges of HEIs, following questions come to mind – Is the wisdom of the above quality gurus applicable here? To what extent? What challenges will get addressed and what will not? Is there a fair agreement on what the “quality” of higher education is?, etc. Let’s start with an attempt to define quality of higher education.

Definition of quality of higher education

Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance (VVOB) defines quality of higher education as follows. There could be many relevant definitions out there but let’s pick this one for the sake of this discussion.

A good quality education is one that provides all learners with capabilities they require to become economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual well-being.

The learning outcomes that are required vary according to context but at the end of the basic education cycle must include threshold levels of literacy and numeracy, basic scientific knowledge and life skills including awareness and prevention of disease.

To see applicability of above definition for education quality in HEIs, when I look at each element of this definition, it gives a few hints about how to relate this definition with HEIs. For example, let’s look at this point made in the definition - “…enhance individual well-being”.

Advancements in computer science and technologies have given us so many advantages, which could not have been even imagined a few years ago. Today we send x-ray photos via whatsapp to a doctor and seek quick inputs in no time, efforts- compare this with physically traveling to another doctor’s clinic and wait in queue for the call. This is an example of how technology can enhance individual’s bell-being.

Example of whatsapp-like software tool and X-ray photos may be a high-end example. But there are many problems which are being faced by all of us in our day-to-day life which require a simple, low-cost solution. Those who have an ability to think about a solution to a very simple yet repetitive problems, ability to architect and develop some simple solution or useful tool, are the learners who are created by a high-quality education system. Can this be considered a measure of education-quality in HIEs? Maybe yes, maybe no. Let’s look at that in the following points for more elaboration and seeking inputs to solve this question.

Quality Gurus

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. 

Many in Japan credit Deming as one of the inspirations for what has become known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle of 1950 to 1960, when Japan rose from the ashes of war on the road to becoming the second largest economy in the world through processes partially influenced by the ideas Deming taught:

• Better design of products to improve service
• Higher level of uniform product quality
• Improvement of product testing in the workplace and in research centres
• Greater sales through side [global] markets

[Source: Wiki]

When I try to apply Deming’s ideas quoted above to Higher Education, I tend to consider “Product” as a “Program”. The moment you think Program as a product, things become very clear in terms of its design, uniformity of the quality, testing of effectiveness of the program design ideas and making students ready for global competition.

Students are not the “products” of a HEI; they are the “reflections” of the product; product is a program for the students. The last point of the Deming’s idea maybe looked at from the perspective scaling students’ abilities to such a level that they should be able to compete at the global level. This perspective becomes more important when we look at following stat:

This analysis shows that at one hand there is a shortfall of skilled labor in a few developed countries and on the other hand there could be surplus skilled labor waiting for placements in developing countries. Therefore, our students will have to be skilled for being placed in the countries where shortfall of skilled labor is.

Shigeo Shingo (1909 - 1990), born in Saga City, Japan, was a Japanese industrial engineer who is considered as the world’s leading expert on manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System. [Source: Wiki]

• Poka Yoke (Mistake Proofing) and Continuous improvement
• Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.

There are three types of poke-a-yoke methods: contact methods, fixed-value methods, and motion-step methods. Though discussing these methods here is out of scope of this paper, it is important to know that Dr. Shingo had invented these methods for mistake-proofing and continuous improvement thereafter.

When I think of relating concepts of Poka-Yoke and Continuous Improvement with some of the educational processes in HEIs, the following example comes to mind: Program design process.

Program design process is taken through continuous improvement as shown in above diagram. Inputs from industry are taken for corrective measures in program design and processes.

However, even before the industry comes in picture, if someone wants to self-assess above program design process and to know how to find mistakes, gaps, one of the mistake proofing methods is direct and indirect assessments. But there could be some other assessments tools which could be used to assess the implementation of above process itself. Inpods is one of the tools which provides way to continuously improve the above process.

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was an Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation.

If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.

Although there is a disagreement over whether Drucker actually said – “If you can't measure it, you can't improve it”- or not, this is a sensible thought. I had implemented Statistical Process Control for measurement of product dimensions and had been benefited a lot. It surely helped raise awareness of all in understanding standard and special variations, behavior of machining processes, insight into cutting tools behavior, etc. Better understanding of processes improved quality and cut down costs, wastages and improve efficiency. Instead of a surprise about why certain things are going wrong, people became well-aware of what is likely to happen next and they started taking precautionary actions before something goes out of control.

Application of measurement in HEIs can be related easily to students’ performance – their marks or credits as a starting point of measuring effectiveness of program design. It is of course a very sensitive and valid way of determining many things about pros and cons of certain ways of pedagogy, curriculum design, and allied things which facilitate education in general.

To create some additional interest in students and improve their abilities of analysis, another measures could be the values derived from various lab experiments (e.g. Chemical reaction), field work resulting into some measurements of say, land contours, etc. Asking students to use some statistical models to determine some additional outcomes of their educational activities could be interesting.

Tracking logically grouped competencies: Competencies are different parameters than learning outcomes. Competencies can be viewed as another essential element of program design to determine effectiveness of program. Usually a program is designed with a pattern of 1 x 4 modules x 8 courses; the competencies of each student in each of these modules could be different. If the modules are logically grouped and mapped to what the industry is looking for in the graduates, tracking competencies as per the modules could be very effective from the perspective of developing employability in the students with respect to the competencies demanded by industries. An early warning system could get developed if tracking is done methodically and consistently to find gaps and improve. Once again, Inpods does extremely good job of mapping and tracking of competencies. 

Summary of the points discussed above

• 3 quality gurus, who have done tremendous work in giving a whole new and path-breaking perspective to quality, efficiency, and continuous improvement, at high-level communicate us following:

a.    Product design, testing and eyeing global markets

b.    Continuous improvement by mistake-proofing

c.    Measurement for insightful analysis

• 2.    There are possibilities of drawing some connections between the ways quality has been practised by the industry with that of HIEs
• 3.    Inpods helps teachers in HEIs to automate some of their educational processes, design curriculum, map and track students and employment outcomes and improve the educational processes continuously by using inpods’s insightful analysis engine.