Total quality management and accreditation in Turkish higher education system: A practice in Dokuz Eylül University, institute of social sciences

Education is a must to both each individual to reach a high standart of living and the public as a whole to have a seat among the highly developed communities. And it is kind of an instrument that enablies us to improve democratic, political and social life issues. For this reason, this important criteria should be highlighted through educational services, espacially those in academic levels. Therefore, a management focused on quality needs to be determined. Successful applications of the total quality management approach in private sector have proved necessary for the public administration, as well. This study has shown that the total quality management approach can be applied in universities. Thus, in the first part; searching the structures and the costs of the services given by the government, this study implies the importance of these services. in the second part, the applicable aspects and credits of the academic services and total quality management are explained, with the concept of quality. In the third part, it is shown that total quality management and accretitation have successfuly been applied in the DEU Social Sciences Institute. At the conclusion, it shows that total quality management is possible to be used in higher educational services in Turkey; however, we might have to face some structural problems.