An Empirical Study of Quality Management in the Libyan Higher Education Context: Al-Fateh University as a Case Study
Higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world and in the developing countries in particular e.g. Libyan HEIs are facing challenges that increase the pressure on them. Some of these challenges are related to the remarkable changes in population growth and fast changes in the development of knowledge and technology. Also, providing adequate resources, maintaining quality, raising funding and strengthening the curriculum are other challenges that need to be faced by those institutions. This research is aimed to investigate issues enabling and affecting the quality of services provided by Libyan public universities using principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy as a framework: Al-Fateh University (AFU) as a case study. The research is qualitative in nature, employing a case study approach and using in-depth semi-structured interviews (from different levels including senior leaders, faculty members, support staff, students, and main employers) as the main data collection tool within the two selected embedded case studies. Those embedded cases are Electric and Electronic Department (EED)-Faculty of Engineering-AFU and Social Service Department (SSD)-Literature Faculty-AFU. Documents are used in addition to interviews in order to fully understand issues enabling and affecting the quality of services provided by the two embedded case studies. Contribution to knowledge is evident by the study, which represents the first attempt to empirically investigate issues enabling and affecting the quality of services provided by Libyan public universities: AFU as a case study through two selected embedded cases EED and SSD. This research provides specific original findings which include the use of Arabic and English language in the same lecture, the concept of students' administration and its consequences, the speciality of leaders biases the understanding of the needs of subordinate staff, suspension of the students' performance regulations affected the quality of education programmes, and a unique situation was found to be the senior and junior staff programme that attempted to improve teaching through knowledge transfer. This research has reduced the gap in knowledge in Libyan HE context in specific and in Arabic HE context in general. Other implications for HEIs are also provided by this research.
Total quality management, Higher education, Service provision
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