Introduction

An increasing awareness towards quality and its desirability is being felt among the different stakeholders of the knowledge society. The field of management education is becoming a focal point of attraction regarding quality consciousness. The various regulatory and promotional bodies like the UGC, the ICSSR and the NCTE are making efforts for better quality enhancement. Institutions like NAAC and NAB are engaged in the quality assessment and accreditation of the institutions imparting education, still quality assurance is far from reality. An effort has been made in this article to understand the concept of quality in education and to highlight the role of various stakeholders for quality assurance and sustenance and to highlight the prominent reasons to meet the challenges.

Concept of Quality in Education

The perceptions for quality may take different issues depending upon the parameters, such as:

1.Fitness for the Purpose

2.Excellence and Standards in Performance

3.The Value for Money

4.A Transformation from the Current Situation

5.Capacity Building

6.Culture

If the purpose for which education is imparted is served, then the education is said to be quality education. The excellence and the standards in performance require well defined process of education for quality education. The value for money requires the quality education in terms of world of work, i.e., employability skills and competence. The criterion of transformation judges quality education as per the well accepted indicators. The capacity building emphasizes quality education in terms of developing rationality, creativity, technical skills, leadership and entrepreneurial qualities and strong character building. The parameter of culture emphasizes quality as a way of life in the entire educational framework which should come from within and should not be imposed upon. On the whole, quality education requires a happy amalgam of competence with values and positive attitude having micro and macro connotations. In nutshell, it may include the following illustrative issues:

-Knowledge Creation, Dissemination and Application

-Social Responsiveness and Community Orientation

-Respect for Expertise, Mutual Trust and Objectivity

-World of Work, Parenthood and Citizenship

-Stress of Knowledge, Skills and Attitude instead of Information and Knowledge only

-Participation, Teamwork and Integrated View

-Transparency, Accountability and Probity

-Collegiality, Understanding others Viewpoints and Learning by Consultation

-Other Contextual, Ethical and Moral Duties

The quality assurance and sustenance is closely connected with four important attributes, viz., Contextualization, Institutionalization, Internalization and Implementation. The Contextualization requires the quality education in the broader context of real life situation, while the institutionalization requires the educational institutions to make quality ensuring process as an integral part of their activity. Making quality as one’s habit and nature and not as a strategy comes under internalization. Implementation focuses on paying attention to details and emphasizing on performance rather than promise, of course, with efficiency and effectiveness. These issues require the various stakeholders in education to play unique but complementary roles to ensure quality education.

Role of Stakeholders

The prominent stakeholders in the field of education are:

Government, Management, Teaching Faculty, Student community, Parents/Society

The role of Government in quality assurance and sustenance is to create and promote a conducive environment for promoting and regulating education in the country. The focal points for this role include policies, planning, resource allocation and governance. The role of management concentrates on institutionalization for quality culture and for this purpose; it has to develop the necessary beliefs, behaviors and procedures. Moreover, the management has to develop the adequate infrastructure, both physical and mental covering vision, sincerity of purpose, purity of heart and mind and conviction of doing the best. Competence, strong commitment and full inclination towards internalization are a must in the role of the faculty. In other words, the teaching pedagogy, the contents of the subject and the method of evaluation should be very strong and effective, not due to compulsion but should be a voluntary regular habit or as a way of life. No amount of quality can be improved and sustained unless it is routinely felt by the students, the ultimate direct beneficiaries. Therefore, the role of students in quality education emphasizes the full realization about the right to quality education and their responsibility towards effective learning. It hardly needs to be emphasized that quality education does contribute substantially to the society and the parents. As such, they are required to play a complementary role to make the campaign of quality education a success. The role of all the stakeholders requires a holistic and integrated approach for strengthening comradeship, building partnerships and striking mutual cooperation. But, the scanning of the roles of these stakeholders is left much to be desired which are not far to seek.

Prominent Reasons

The scanning of the roles of the stakeholders results in to the following prominent lapses which have become the reasons for remaining far behind the goal of achieving quality education in general and management education in particular as outlined below:

-In the process of transformation, quantitative measurement prevails.

-While developing the culture for education, commercial considerations largely prevail over ethical and moral values and therefore strong character building and objective functioning remained far from reality.

-The role of government, management and the faculty is very frequently checkered by the different types of pressure groups having conflicting vested interests.

-As a part of the implementation package, there has been a little recognition of quality for motivation.

-Particularly for professional and higher education which requires reasonable selective approach has not resisted to the demand for mass education.

-The various stakeholders widely have to submit the sense of complacency and self centered approach and attitude.

-Lastly we talk of public accountability which has to be effective but the public accountability in practice is very weak.

In the above context, one would like to conclude that the quality has to be properly perceived and understood and for assuring and sustaining quality education, the holistic and integrated role of the stakeholders is indispensable. There is much to be desired in achieving the ultimate goal of quality education in the present era.

This article has been written by Prof. (Dr.) Vinita Agarwal, Amity Business School, Jaipur.