Quality costs in education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the relevance of Feigenbaum's quality costs model to managers in higher education and to put forward a possible way of implementing such a model in an educational area.Design/methodology/approach – Following the author's Master's project into the relevance of TQM to a higher education institution, the need to increase student numbers without pro‐rata increase in costs is discussed along with the subsequent need to “measure”. Feigenbaum's model is described in detail with examples of industrial costs compared with higher education costs. A possible way of implementing the model is suggested with justification for the approach taken. The scope of the paper is limited to the model and its possible use.Findings – The paper finds that taking the decision to implement the model requires a willingness to incur costs before realising savings. The examples show that planning the incurring of costs can result in the realised savings – but accurate measurement of th...