Are total quality management programmes in higher education worth the effort?

Total Quality Management (TQM) has generally been recognized as a major innovation in management thought and has gained widespread acceptance in business and industry. The benefits of TQM have been outlined in the academic as well as the popular press[1, 2, 3, 4]. Dean and Evans[5] believe that to survive the increasing competition from home and abroad American businesses and industries are forced to return to the basics of improving quality and cost competitiveness of their products and services. As a result quality is emerging as the central factor in corporate America today....