Devising smart strategic framework for assessment of quality in engineering education

Establishment of more engineering colleges has raised the critical issue of quality for sustaining invisible competition, amidst financial challenges and market pressure. For assessment of quality and ascertaining its continual improvement, developing a quality framework is highly opportune in the present day context. Implementation of modified quality function deployment methodology is expected to ensure that attributes of quality of engineering educational services offered are customer driven and not guided only by the perceptions of service provider. In order to facilitate that the voice of customers is effectively heard and is translated into improvement in operations for quality enhancement, the paper discusses certain methodologies to narrow down the spectrum of opinions and ratings expressed by multiple stakeholders, into meaningful inferences. Carrying out Analytic Hierarchy Process analysis for establishing priorities for the improvement and corrective actions, renders it smart strategy for quality enhancement. Modified Expero model is then proposed to be invoked to asses and evaluate effectiveness of engineering education currently prevailing. The paper envisages describing overall methodology for the assessment of quality, using hybrid model which is expected to synergize the assessment exercise and neutralise influence of limitations of constituent methodologies and models.