AUTHOR
Jonsson, Niklas

DATE
2004-08-02

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
Products are often divided into two broad categories, manufactured goods and services. In the developed countries, service functions today account for the greatest part of the economic activity. Quality of service is considered an important factor in order to gain long term profits. Higher educational institutions offer educational services and the purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding about quality assurance of higher education. In order to reach that purpose I have compared and international quality standard (ISO 9000), which is a standard based on manufacturing goods, with what a state university in California does in reagrds to the requirements of ISO 9000. The main conclusion drawn from the analysis of my case study is that universities tend not to focus enough on the product requirements of its customers. Instead of identifying these requirements, they are decided internally. As a result the quality of their educational service is lower than what it could potentially be.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--04/169--SE / NR 2004:169