THE APPLICATION oF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT STANDARDS IN EGYPTIAN PHYSIOTHERAPY COLLEGES

Background and purpose: Higher education is the cornerstone of the societies progress. It has become very important for the educational institutions to implement the concepts of total quality management (TQM) and their specific standards to improve the quality of educational outputs. So, this study was conducted to identify the extent to which TQM standards applied to Egyptian physiotherapy colleges from the point of view of their administrative leadership, to determine whether there is difference depending on the type of faculty (government or private) and to determine the correlation between the number of experience years and the extent of TQM application. Methods: The study sample consisted of 12 administrative leaders (deans and vice deans) from 7 faculties. The study tool was a questionnaire consisted of 55 items with established validity and reliability; the questionnaire was divided into 7 fields, reflecting the total quality standards in education. Statistical analysis was performed using the means and standard deviations of the areas of the questionnaire, independent sample t tests and using Pearson's correlation coefficient. Results: although the overall average of the means of the scores was high, there is statistically significant difference between the means of the degree of application of TQM in the faculties of physiotherapy in favour of government colleges. Additionally, the results showed no correlation between the number of experience years of the study sample and the grades of their answers on the question axes. Conclusion: implementing comprehensive quality programs in education is highly recommended, paying special attention to private colleges.