An assessment of the undergraduate engineering students' views on the awareness of total quality engineering education

This paper is an outcome of the discussion held between a group of final year students who felt that, since the information technology has spread its wings everywhere, it is very much necessary for them to become aware of Quality Assurance (QA) and Total Quality Management (TQM) during their undergraduate engineering programme. The students expressed their views that, for successful engineering professionals, the dominant factor is quality, which is conformance to requirements. The assessment of the students' views has led some educators to think that some topics of Total Quality Engineering (TQE), like QA and TQM, must be included in the curricula of all the general engineering disciplines. The key to survival is the deepest sense of commitment to please the customers and the best possible and affordable efforts to retain them. Inculcating the value of this attribute by introducing some ideas and topics of TQE to the students of all the general engineering disciplines in their curriculum at the undergraduate level would be a highly beneficial move and suggestions are given to revise the existing engineering curricula accordingly.