The prospects of implementing the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) in education

Lately there have been initiatives in stimulating an improvement in the quality of products/services, both on national and international levels. In Europe there is the European Foundation for the Management of Quality, that accords the European Award for Quality and on the international level there is the set of ISO 9000 standards. This new perception of quality has now reached education. Educational institutions are required to devise their own specific ways of approaching the matter of quality and to demonstrate publicly that they too, can provide consistent high-quality services. Among the new initiatives we can note the insuring of quality, the total quality and the management of total quality, aiming at improving quality, seeking to achieve excellence too. The paper aims to highlight this new philosophy, this new methodology called TQM that helps educational institutions to master changes and establish their own ideas so as to be able to face the new external pressures of competition and we tried to present the prospects of implementing TQM in education. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection