EDITORIAL

Prospects of quality¹

¹ When establishing the quality attributes of a good or service, there is no clear definition for higher education. Therefore, one can assume that each institution must show the own quality definition and, through the factors, indicators and characteristics exhibit that seeks continuous improvement. This explains the importance of validating the judgments of the social environment and the need for all institutional stakeholders know about the project.

Why the Quality?

Garcia and others (2014, p.12) claim that:

Education, together with the geographical advantages, the natural wealth and institutional maturity is one of the most important factors for regional and national economic progress and regional and national economic progress ... Although the amount of education-as the average of years of schooling of the labor force, for instance, impact on productivity and economic growth of a nation, several studies have found that the impact of education quality on these variables is much greater ….

However, it should be noted that the quality problem is not constant along the time. In much of the last century and the beginning of this, policies focused on coverage in response to the demands from corporate human resources trained in the repetition of the manufacturing processes. Today it can be assumed that the company has changed its north looking for additional and foremost, meet the needs specific to the prominence of the service sector creativity, leaving repetitive training for technical and technological as substantive and important part of higher education levels.

Thus, it can be assumed that the higher education quality must meet the high quality of human resources able to perform in traditional industrial processes and also be competent in a their creative proposal of building competitiveness in a higher order as it is presented by Teece (2009). Regard Garcia and others (2014, p. 12) also suggest that educational quality is essential. A continued emphasis on quality has enabled it, for instance, Singapore, Finland, Canada (particularly Ontario) and South Korea-the four countries that today have the best performance in international tests of knowledge- transcend, in relatively short periods of time, precarious production processes and little added value, to become nations of knowledge.

What the Quality?

In transit civilizing education has grown through several stages. From the encyclopedic in the past centuries in search of relevance based on the culture generated from the modernity expressed in the factory schemes. This accumulated responded to specific points in the development of societies and their evolutionary exploration through the accumulation of knowledge. Today we can recognize that the criteria of beauty and truth (form and content) as an expression of culture have changed substantially and that this happens today pre filters, tomorrow will also be deprecated.

By accepting these reasons, the quality can be thought as a temporary problem meets defined interests and needs territorially constructed. Thus, the quality of higher education is not only or even, is rather diffuse and contradictory. As it can be assumed as a general criterion for any of the instruments that validate the beauty of the approaches. The truth is in the validation of the social construction and that is an externality on Institutions of Higher Education. This means that there is no universal organizational quality and it depends on the definitions that allow differentiation from the actors who envision. By this is meant that the quality depends on the size of the collective dreams, in a teleological sense, and expresses the identity and relevance of an organizational structure, in this case the University and its validation by society. In its application for everyday life, it can be argued that the quality is obtained to the extent that proposals differ from achievements and these are accepted as truth by society is conquered.

Thus, the foundational question of quality refers to reading and explaining what is the scenario in which the quality of a program or institution is intended. In past centuries it was thought that the quality was repeated through the accumulated experience presented in class by the teacher. These were relevant to social scheme was organized as industrial culture and its claim of uniformity universities. Today is required even recognize that as contributor and transcendent paradigm, but the shift to new stadiums societies have required new skills and competencies as presented by Sen (2010). These, rather than repeat, must make the graduate a representative of highly effective accumulated institutional knowledge from novel to propose and execute solutions. It’s the new economy entrepreneurship summarizing creativity, imagination, risk, uncertainty and passion for finding objects and new schemes as described by Tom (1972) in reference to theoretical and mathematical problems of structural stability and catastrophes.

Consequently, the problem centers on the construction of the new players requiring the new Caribbean scenario: 1. A graduate with a high level of training, and this is achieved if a benchmarking program from universities in Latin America or the world, depending on ambitions and possibilities, you can add clear differentiators 2. These differentiators must recognize the society as an important contribution to the solution of their problems in the regional areas in a globalized environment, ie if they generate social change and development 3. It is necessary that the organization and its stakeholders are able to demonstrate their truths in debates at the frontiers of knowledge with other organizations and other stakeholders.

Defined the problems of beauty (form) and truth (content validated from our reading of the environment) the risk and uncertainty are resolved in a plausible strategy that address the three effective communications strategy components: power, rule and truth. This requires the implementation of a solid institutional socially accepted. In short, quality is differentiation and this is plausible if it has a north accepted by the academic community and society as successful validates the changes and adjustments proposed and implemented.

Quality Delimitation

Quality is a concept which can be attributed, among others, from two major possibilities when you do social reference. For one thing if it helps to consolidate the status quo, that is deemed to be relevant, or whether it contributes to change and innovation approaches. In the first event can be assumed as a follower dependent dynamics of society. The second option is a leader in the pretense of social change, based on improving productivity in an extended version, when it comes to the economic system.

The problem is that the first version consolidates a scheme that is generally unfair. For example, quality giving education “low quality” if you look that the graduate can leave the area of the minimum wage and enter a higher income, but not close to having the same options of those who studied in schools high quality reputable.

However if you look in some detail and from the graduates, if there was a quality, though it would not correspond to what the new emerging social forms wanted An extreme example may clarify: if a homeless person wears a brand X dress, he will improve the quality of his clothing. The issue of fairness is whether to go from rags to X brand has a lower speed than that between the X and Y brand which it is supposed a better quality change. If the second speed is higher than the first, then it is unfair because even when it does not help to improve the general conditions of renewed development. This reasoning is characterized as socially oriented and is best expressed in Rawls (1971) and Sen (2000 and 2010). This position is about public policy as a solution.

The second option is expressed by the change from the functional requirements of the application in a close relationship with the structural supply options. Its main defining element is income. By improving corporate income improves average income of workers and thereby is appreciated the effort as Stiglitz (1987) shows, for whom one of whose factors is the quality of teaching. An important theoretical of this issue is Harsanyi (1955, 1974, 1978, 1986, 1987). This position is on the market as a solution.

This apparent dilemma is reflected in the requirements of the accreditation of high quality in higher education: an expressed on the requirements and impacts of evidence and the other, in comparisons with HEI (Higher Education Institutions) featured as the best quality on market, and that is generally accepted as a benchmarking.

This leads to understand: the managers produce better quality and lower quality produce low-ranking employees and a continuum between these two extremes. But both are mutually complementary and the market needs to run all the options provided that the financial efficiency of enterprises ensure long-term sustainability of HEIs.²

How the Quality

In this perspective the problem of quality in higher education requires setting several previous concepts. On the one hand, recognizing the social function of education expressed in the ability to transform their social environment, and secondly, that the quality does not strictly referring to storage capacity but competition to generate evolutionary changes in society. Otherwise you may question: higher education as a system is significantly impacting social change? Or, is producing graduates who contribute to maintain a status quo of productivity without skills to meet the changing requirements of today’s competitive scenario? In Sanabria and Velez (2012), to Bogota, it is an answer to this question in relation to the manufacturing industry.

The average yield was compared against variables such as enrollment, the possibility of exit, their relationship to the net investment in manufacturing enterprises, the compensation to the professional employees in the industry and the cost of higher education. The result is that the social accumulation as a trend, higher education in the period analyzed, although helped to maintain the status quo and not change that would generate the best condition possible to build equity and development.

The solution of the problem can happen to understand the role of institutions and the continuing need for the change. The adjustment would read in the medium and long term problems of society, make strategic foresight and adapting institutions of higher demand environment regarding micro-curriculums and overall building structure and its internal knowledge transfer education. One possible solution are studies of economic and social environments, impact of graduates in adaptive transformation of enterprises and regions crossed with trends in the economy, society and general local and global markets to build a distinguishing sufficiently substantiated.

It is in this space where you can redefine the problem of quality beyond conventional indicators.

It is then to find their own choices and not to follow fashion, to find the distinctive way of transmitting knowledge and training in skills. The priority then there is not the list callings or examinations, nor the subject-supposed to know the traditional role of teaching but the teacher-student collaborative effort to rebuild the knowledge to solve problems of reality in the classroom.

There are several problems to solve: 1. the main, calibrate the expressed needs of our skills training model 2. The problem of students in a complex and technology-driven environment 3. The teachers and their capacities and skills to construct and reconstruct knowledge, and 4. That of an institutional framework as the model and general teacher training may have needs to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their processes.

There are many problems and many edges. That’s what makes it complex and the solution is not so obvious. Consultation is needed to define a relative maximum achievable and to not accept a minimum tolerable. And above all, wills of everyone to participate in social progress.

² Henceforth the editorial is based on two columns by Sanabria (2013a and 2013B).

Néstor Juan Sanabria Landazábal
Docente Investigador Editor de la Revista Dimensión Empresarial, Barranquilla, Colombia

Lilia Mercedes Mendoza Vega
Docente Investigadora Coeditora de la Revista Dimensión Empresarial. Barranquilla, Colombia

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