Ed. note: Haas, associate professor and chief of the
chemistry section at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, was
selected as an American Council on Education Fellow for
1992-93. He served his fellowship at Western Michigan U.
(WMU) developing a quality improvement program for the
school. This article summarizes WMU's efforts using CQI in
planning.
With the exception of a handful of entrepreneurial community
colleges--Fox Valley (WI), Delaware County (PA)--and four-year
institutions--Samford (AL), Oregon State--higher education has
been a late arrival in the quality classroom. However, it's
rapidly catching up on missed work.
By the end of the 1992-93 academic year, well over half of
the 3500 postsecondary institutions in the U.S. had either
implemented or were seriously considering CQI programs, including
comprehensive research institutions like Michigan, Pennsylvania,
Cornell, and Wisconsin. In addition, CQI was a major theme of
AAHE's annual meeting in 1993.
Adapted to higher education, quality programs offer
tantalizing benefits as universities are being increasingly
called to account by their various constituencies: students,
parents, alumni, taxpayers, legislators, boards, business and
industry, employers of graduates, foundations, and private and
federal granting agencies.
Early efforts to transpose CQI principles from a corporate
setting to an academic one have enjoyed uneven success.
Quality programs may be sabotaged from a number of
directions:
1. Impatience--Quality doesn't happen overnight. It's not a
"quick fix" or "instant cure" but an ongoing process that
requires an implementation period of at least five years.
2. Failure of top leaders to "walk the talk"--Central
administrators must lead by example and be prepared to devote
15%-25% of their work week to quality initiatives.
3. Unwillingness of top administrators to relinquish authority--
CEOs and vice presidents must exercise leadership but not
control. Teams must be empowered to make decisions and take
responsibility.
4. Failure to adapt business principles to an academic setting--
Faculty, especially in arts and sciences, can be brutal critics
of CQI. Wise leaders will focus initially not on academic
departments or classroom teaching, but on support service areas
with layered bureaucracies, heavy paper flow, and time-encrusted
procedures. As these areas accumulate a record of success,
academic departments should be encouraged (but not required) to
form quality teams.
Institutions may avoid antagonizing the faculty by replacing
simplistic language, false analogies, and business jargon with
terms like 'constituents' or 'beneficiaries' or 'those we serve'
instead of 'customers,' 'outcomes' instead of 'products.'
5. Absence of a commonly understood, widely accepted,
institutional mission--Quality-improvement efforts are most
likely to succeed when they're tied to a deliberate process of
strategic planning led by the institution's CEO. The planning
process is complete and successful when everyone knows where the
ship is headed, everyone holds an oar, and everyone's pulling in
the same direction.
INTEGRATING CQI WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING
Institutions embarking on a major quality initiative would
do well to follow Covey's advice by "beginning with the end in
mind," that is, by articulating a statement of purpose or
mission. The institution's vision must be firmly rooted in its
own values-or what is sometimes called the "institutional
culture."
All in the organization must feel welcome to express their
views and be invited to come together to create something greater
than any one of them could create alone. The CEO must lead the
way by convening influential groups and inviting answers to
difficult and probing questions.
An important role for the president during this process of
self-scrutiny is to "drive out fear"--a central principle in
Deming's work--by encouraging free debate about the institution's
strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and desired
outcomes and possible assessment measures.
This "situation analysis" not only allows an institution to
validate its current mission, but also to express its collective
anxiety about the external forces that threaten it and to begin the
slow, painful contemplation of change. From this open discussion will
emerge a shared understanding of the institutional culture ultimately
affecting decision-making and resource allocation.
Institutions already engaged in academic program review,
self-studies for accreditation purposes, learning assessment, or
accountability programs would be wise to bring all of these processes
under the single mantle of CQI rather than present CQI as "just one
more thing we have to do."
At the same time, they need to persuade the consumers of these
reports --accrediting bodies, boards, government agencies, and
foundations--to accept a single reporting mechanism that's developed
and owned by the persons being evaluated.
CQI PLANNING INITIATIVES AT WESTERN MICHIGAN
Western Michigan U. is in the early stages of implementing quality
programs in conjunction with strategic planning, accountability,
assessment, self-study, and program-review processes already underway.
The university has identified a small number of major goals to
guide their development through the l990s. Its president, provost, and
vice presidents see CQI as an effective response to accountability
demands from both internal and external constituencies.
For WMU's quality initiative, President Haenicke proposed a mid-
range planning horizon of three to five years. As a first step, all
major administrative and academic units were asked to prepare reports
listing their accomplishments during the past year, their midrange
goals, and any potential barriers to achieving those goals.
Three major ad hoc committees on academics, administrative
support, and tuition and fees, reporting to a central planning
committee, were created and charged with developing recommendations on
institutional directions and priorities, with maximum input from their
constituencies.
WMU's planning committee began with areas where CQI initiatives
had already begun, as well as units that had shown an interest in
forming teams: for example--financial aid, computing, college of
business advising, health center, and admissions.
WMU developed and shared campuswide, the basic tenets of their CQI
initiatives. Here is WMU's statement:
1. CQI positions WMU as an institution which delivers excellent service
to diverse customers.
2. CQI strengthens the institution by developing the potential of
individuals and supporting their achievements.
3. CQI is an intentional process which requires strategic thinking by
everyone to seek continuous improvement of services, programs, and
facilities.
4. CQI is designed to make WMU more flexible and competitive with the
effective use of resources compatible with the university's mission.
CQI represents a major paradigm shift for American higher
education. While it offers an exciting opportunity for positive change,
it's also an undertaking full of risk, especially for leaders who are
new to an institution and have yet to establish the confidence and
trust of the university community.
The rapid evolution of WMU from a small college with a narrowly
defined mission to a large, comprehensive, research university serving
increasingly diverse populations has created a major challenge:
defining its complex mission in simple terms.
In 1990, WMU endorsed a mission statement with five major
components:
high quality instructional programs whose outcomes can be
assessed,
expanded research outcomes,
contributions to the economic development of the region and
state, community service, and
increased diversity among students, faculty, and staff.
In a major international address, Haenicke endorsed these goals,
stating that "accountability to the people we serve" must be the
primary concern of higher education in the l990s and that WMU was about
to embark upon a systematic, universitywide, strategic planning process
and adopt the principles and practices of CQI, defined as "doing the
right thing in the right way the first time."
WMU, unlike other institutions, wasn't in a state of local crisis
when it turned to CQI. The university was motivated instead by the
larger, more global crisis facing American higher education, loss of
faith among those we serve, and by the desire to position themselves
more competitively among their peer institutions.
EARLY LESSONS
Although its quality improvement initiatives aren't fully
operational, WMU has made a good start and has learned some valuable
lessons:
1. Start in administrative areas-computing services, accounts
payable and receivable, and auxiliaries.
2. Employ a "small gains" strategy. Select a few strategic areas
with high likelihood of success.
3. Make participation voluntary, not mandatory, even among central
administrators.
4. Lead by example. Prior to launch, each vice president should
identify a problem in his/her area and address it using CQI principles,
training modules, statistical tools, and methodology. In this way, top
administrators get "just-in-time" training while communicating an
important message to their staff: we aren't asking you to do anything
we're unwilling to do ourselves.
5. Just do it. Plan carefully but don't talk the program to death.
Take the plunge and learn by doing. Colleges are great places to make
mistakes and learn valuable lessons.
6. Let people choose their own projects. Administrators should
avoid the temptation of rushing to identify projects, which implies
top-down judgments. Empower the people in the trenches to identify
their own problem areas and work toward their own solutions.
7. Avoid using business buzz words that evoke a negative knee jerk
response, especially in academe.
8. Maintain a low initial profile. Start small, gradually
enlarging the program's public profile as its successes may justify.
9. Don't promise big cost savings or characterize the program as a
budget-cutting tool even though efficiencies may result in real
savings. Instead, focus on improving services.
10. Celebrate successes and reward teams rather than individuals.
WMU has a timeline to insure that momentum is maintained in the
coming year. Haenicke has named Barbara Liggett, the associate vice
president for human resources, to lead WMU's quality effort. A
Q-Council, consisting of the president, provost, vice presidents, and
advisor for quality will monitor the program's progress over the next
several years.
A quality steering task force, composed of representatives from
the pilot teams, faculty senate, and bargaining units, will receive CQI
training, evaluate progress, identify resource needs, and report
successes to the university community. After two years, the university
will undertake a major program evaluation.
WMU, like many other American colleges and universities, has
turned down a new path leading to a future ripe with potential.
Strategic planning enables an institution to think about what it wants
to be, build on its strengths, and seize new opportunities. CQI gives
it a workable paradigm, for marshaling its collective intelligence,
skills, and values in the service of students and society.
