It is a fact and hard reality that quality and discipline are at cross roads in the total system of India. The quality of education / educational institutions in the past was measured in quantitative terms in relation to the:
Students enrolment
Faculty strength
Number of programmes offered and
Physical infrastructure in terms of buildings and other amenities etc.
But today we are living in a knowledge-based, knowledge oriented and knowledge driven society. Therefore, quality in Higher education indicates more than quantitative measures or indicators. There is a paradign shift in this. The shift is towards the areas like
v Student centred teaching – learning process
v Socially relevant and productive research and
v Outreach programs
When these areas are harmoniously blended or integrated into a functional whole in the education system, it would certainly enhance the quality of the learner and enrich the society. Socially, empower it economically and enlighten it politically. Only then education can have its intrinsic and instrumental impact on the learner and the society at large respectively.
Community engagement is one way to create closer ties between institutions of higher education and the communities they serve. It deepens the quality of learning and discovery.
Higher education is not exempt from the process of globalization. The topic of globalization and its implications for higher education are wide-ranging. There are many dimensions – trans-national education, multi-national arrangements governing access, mobility and quality assurance. All link to globalization.
Globalization influences quality assurance, accreditation and the recognition of qualifications - especially when they are earned through trans-national education. It is in this domain that some argue for putting international frameworks in place to regulate quality assurance, accreditation and the recognition of diplomas.
Every organization, be it a company, a corporate division, a university, a college, or an academic department, has both a stated mission, which is written for public consumption, and a true mission, which dictates how the organization allocates resources and rewards performance. The two missions may be the same or different. The working definition of "quality" within an organization is determined primarily by the organization’s true mission. The concept of the true mission is needed to explain the principal differences between the industrial and academic cultures that are related to quality management.
In industry, the true mission is relatively clear, and quality is relatively straightforward to define. In education, the true mission is complex and subject to endless debate, and quality is therefore almost impossible to define in an operationally useful manner.
Whatever the corporate mission statement may say, the true mission of a for-profit company is to maximize profits (more precisely, some measure of profitability). Setting aside altruistic objectives that may motivate individual company personnel, such goals as zero defects, customer satisfaction, staff empowerment, etc., are to the corporate mind simply means to the end of maximizing profits. "Quality" may be defined as any property of an industrial process or product that varies in a generally monotonic manner with profits. The goal of raising quality is therefore consistent with the mission of maximizing profits.
In education as in industry, the stated mission and the true mission may not coincide. The similarity ends there, however. The goals that constitute the educational mission of a university are extremely hard to pin down to everyone’s satisfaction. Is the goal to produce graduates who simply know a lot more than they did when they enrolled as freshmen? What is it that we want them to know? Do we wish to equip the students with the skills they will need to succeed as professionals? What skills would those be? Are they the same for all professions? Are we trying to produce "educated citizens"? Whose definition of "educated" will we adopt? Plato’s? Dewey’s? Alan Bloom’s? Is it our purpose to promote certain values in our graduates? Which ones?
Agreeing on educational goals is only the first step toward formulating an academic mission, however. In the modern university, teaching is just one of several important functions, the others being research, service to business and technology and service to the community and society at large.
In industry, quality is relatively easy to assess. In education, even if a definition of quality can be formulated and agreed upon, devising a meaningful assessment process is a monumental task.
In industry, the customer is relatively easy to identify and is always right, at least in principle. In education, those who might be identified as "customers" have contradictory needs and desires and may very well be completely wrong.
In industry, a clear chain of command usually exists, on paper and in fact. In education, a chain of command might exist on paper, but it is in fact relatively amorphous and nothing at all like its industrial counterpart.
Colleges should make a very serious survey of the existing scenario of higher education in India against global setting. One would witness the existence and operation of THREE forces simultaneously and these forces or factors may be categorized as
- Facilitating factors
- Compelling factor and
- Threatening factors
These three factors or forces certainly operate in a big way and if these are to be used as congenial factors for the empowerment of colleges. Colleges and the various functionaries in the system should mobilize their entrepreneurial talents blended with the entrepreneurial abilities to capitalize these forces towards growth and progress and ultimately to the good of mankind.
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