The levels of competition and market forces have become extremely high in the higher education sector; these challenges led the higher education to be viewed as an international business. To cope with these environmental changes, higher education Institutions (HEIs) found Total Quality Management (TQM) as an inescapable tool to achieve their organizational objectives. Accordingly, it was evidenced that (TQM) can be implemented in (HEIs) but how to implement effectively is still not known. The objectives of this research are: to review (TQM) literature related to higher education sector, to explore various research instruments for studying quality assurance in higher education, and to determine the critical success factors in higher education based on total quality management (TQM) philosophy. To achieve these objectives, the study was conducted in Higher Education Institutions context. Data was collected through a distributed questionnaire to the academic and nonacademic staff members from the chosen HEI, Waljat College of Applied Sciences, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. Statistical tests were performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). This study found that the highest significant success factors were Employees Involvement followed by Stakeholder Focus, and Other Stakeholder Focus respectively. The significance of this study is that it identified parameters of an efficient (TQM) system based on identification of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that may influence implementation of (TQM).

The levels of competition and market forces have become extremely high in the higher education sector; these challenges led the higher education to be viewed as an international business. To cope with these environmental changes, higher education Institutions (HEIs) found Total Quality Management (T...