The problems on application total quality management in higher educational institutions in Turkey

The role of quality in the higher education sector is increasingly becoming more important as the dominance of market orientation leaves no alternative for universities but to improve their quality while increasing efficiency. For years, several studies have been undertaken toi improve quality in business companies. While many of these studies have been done on initially in manufacturing sector. Relatively fewer studies have been undertaken in sevice sector concerning TQM implementations. The extant literature has not been sufficient to direct managers and practitioners and towards transfering TQM principles to service sector. To fulfill this aim, many improvements have been done especially in the field of service marketing and management. This thesis basicaly focuses on TQM implementation in higher. The implementation dimensions of TQM in HEIs and the factors affecting it with the problems faced during implementaton constitute the main aims of the study. Firstly, the implementation dimensions of TQM in HEIs were shown empirically. Then, some environmental and institutional variables which may affect TQM implementation process in HEIs were determined. A number of hypotheses explaning the relationship among these variables and the implementation dimensions of TQM were formulated. A postal survey has been chosen as a data gathering method. A sample of ten universities which have experienced TQM to a certain extent has been chosen in Turkey. A total of 351 questionnaires have been sent to administrative staff and academicians of the sample universities during the period of September-November 2002. After one reminder and follow-up, a total of 181 questionnaires were returned with a response rate of 51.5. After analysing the data, 6 factors of TQM implementation were produced. These factors were labelled as leadership, improvement, student-centered, implementation problems, education and management adaptation, modelling. The findings of the survey indicate that strong support has been found to these hypoteheses of the study, which are about the sufficiency of the lecturers, research orientation and level of institutionalization universities being more familiar with the TQM implementations. The remaining three of the hypotheses gained little or no support which are about the ownership, geographical location and the duties of the staff- academicians or administrative -.