Quality Management System for Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Global organizations currently face the challenge of managing massive volumes of data and knowledge efficiently. The consolidation of the knowledge society is manifesting itself in an evident way, driving university institutions to reconfigure both their academic and administrative processes in order to achieve excellence in their functions. In this context, the central purpose of this research is to present a comprehensive systematic review of the implementation of Quality Management Systems (QMS) in the field of higher education. In order to address this issue with the utmost rigor, a systematic review was carried out incorporating the fundamental pillars outlined in the PRISMA statement. In an initial phase, a selection of 883 papers was carried out from preeminent documentary sources, namely: Scopus, IEEE and Web Science. Subsequently, the final review was confined to a corpus of 23 research papers. The results derived from this thorough review show that the paradigm embodied by the ISO 9001 model prevails as the most predominant approach, with 69.56% representativeness in the set of studies analyzed. In contrast, the EFQM, TQM and Malcom Baldrige models showed a more modest presence, each accounting for 4.35% of the total number of studies examined. In addition, fundamental aspects have been identified that both facilitate and condition the process of implementing QMS.