Model Construction And Application Of Postgraduate Education Quality Function Deployment

Chinese graduate education is in the rapid development phase, the number of student isincreasing with the degree types becoming tremendously various. However, the developmentcomes along with some quality issues, and causes widespread concern. The graduateeducation is typical stakeholder-related activities, experts and administrators, students andtheir families and some other stakeholders have influence in the whole process of graduateeducation. The expectations for the graduate education change with times, therewith theupdates of education quality concept, the requirement for the quality of graduate educationgets much higher, to meet or even to surpass the consumers’, the stakeholders’expectations isthe growing tendency. However, in the reality of limited resources, to meet all theexpectations of all the stakeholders is obviously unrealistic nor infeasible, therefore, graduateeducation should find the way to keep balance in such a multiple expectations situation, andshould allocate resource efficiently, take the most effective quality assurance means, in orderto meet the needs of the most important priority, to ensure the quality of the most prominentquality characteristics.On the basic of generalization and summary in existing literature, this research builds thegraduate education quality function deployment basing on the theory and method of qualityfunction deployment, stakeholder and quality management. In the way of ‘stakeholderdemands-quality characteristics-quality assurances’, the paper configures the graduateeducation quality characteristics and quality safeguards around the stakeholder’s requirements,and transfers the stakeholders’ demands to the specific information that the participators andadministrators can understand, so that they can carry out the graduate education qualitymanagement and improvement. On the basis of the predecessor’s studies, futher analysisseparately on the stakeholder requirements, quality characteristics and quality safeguards viathe theoretical deduction and build the stakeholder requirement-quality characteristicscorrelation matrix and quality characteristics-quality assurances correlation matrix.Considering the availability and representativeness of the data, Guangdong graduate is chosento be the object of empirical study, to test and applicate the model.The main results of empirical research can be summarized as follows:(1) According tothe analysis of components of the graduate education quality function deployment model, therequirements of the graduate education stakeholders includes basic demands, interactdemands and growth demands3higher dimensions, and the graduate education characteristicsincludes fame, responsiveness, dependability and empathy4higher dimensions, graduate education quality assurances includes highschools management, student participation,government administration and social association4higher dimensions, and there aresignificant relation both between the stakeholder demands and quality characteristics, andbetween the quality characteristics and quality assurances, which can be applied in the model.(2) According to the application of the graduate education in Guangdong Province, thestakeholder most value the graduate education’s ability which can satisfy the growth demands,most value the graduate education reputation of quality characteristics, and the interiormanagement mechanism of colleges and universities is the most effective and importantquality safeguards.(3) According to the analysis of the impact of the stakeholders’ personalcharacteristics in the application of the model, various stakeholders have significantlydifference on graduate education demand. Employees of firms and enterprises have a markedhigher demand in interaction than government agencies and staffs, graduate student also havea marked higher demand in interaction than government agencies and staffs. Stakeholderswith different education degree and types have a significantly difference views on graduateeducation safeguards. Stakeholders with a master degree and a bachelor degree attach moreimportance to social association quality safeguards than one with a lower degree. Graduatestudents value the government administration quality safeguards much more than employeesof firms and enterprises and government agencies and staffs.The main innovative points of research can be summarized as follows:(1) Introduce theconcept and method of quality function deployment to graduate education qualitymanagement, which is widely used in the industrial manufacture.(2) Based on the theoreticalanalysis and expert interviews, to separately analysis the quality characteristics and thequality assurances.(3) The correlation matrix of the model is determined by set-valuediteration method, which can improve the objective reasonableness of the research results thatcombine the score results of several experts.The construction and application of Chinese postgraduate education quality functiondeployment model can help to enrich the theory research of higher education qualitymanagement system, also provides decision-making reference for education managers.