Application of total quality management in developing quality assessment model: The case of Vietnamese higher education

Abstract

The shift from elite education to mass education in Vietnam has met the demand for education for everybody as well as for quality human resource talent for an emerging nation. Under the resource constraint, understanding the quality dimensions of education and its priority level is important for effective and efficient policies. This study was carried out using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to develop quality criteria and a ranking model. Two rounds of in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen experts in the field, who were rectors, employers, and recruitment specialists to develop the quality framework applied in Vietnamese universities under total quality management (TQM), starting from the input of the senior secondary school leavers, through a teaching process to the output. The first round of interviews were unstructured questionnaires designed to explore the main factors in quality assessment model. The second round affirmed the experts’ agreement on the assessment model. Then, fuzzy logic was applied to rank eight criteria in the quality assessment model into priority order: cost, teaching and administrative staff, leadership, curriculum, student-related factors, internationalization, admissions, and campus. The results are critical for identifying the necessary actions to enhance the education quality and to further research on the optimal quality model.