DEVELOPMENT OF FRAMEWORK FOR ZERO-DEFECT STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: LEAN-THINKING APPROACH

The quality in high education has recently become a focal concern of government’s policy interventions worldwide. The ultimate goal of such interventions is to enhance the educational quality and promote educational process for all enrolled students. The student learning outcomes (SLOs) have always been the way of assessing the quality of high education systems. This prevalent discourse about the quality in high education leaves many of uncertainties about its effectiveness under the real-life labor market fluctuations and the global economic development. The quality in education literatures are abundant of research works dedicated for extending the “Lean Thinking” principles for improving the quality of educational process. These studies have emphasized on potential benefits of “Lean Thinking” in lowering cost and increasing student satisfaction scores, etc. However, the “Lean Thinking” concept was firstly originated from industry, not academia. With this in mind, some fundamental concerns should be accounted in order to successfully applying the “Lean Thinking” in higher education context. This paper addresses these concerns and develops a framework that utilizing the “Lean Thinking” as a quality control approach for reaching the “Zero-defect Student” outcome. The proposed framework would help in monitoring and controlling important indicators of educational process such as the retention and transfer rate.