Critical success factors for next generation technical education institutions

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to create a hierarchy of critical success factors affecting the higher technical education institutions, taking a case study of India. Using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM), the paper attempts to establish the inter-linkages among ten critical success factors for enhancing the performance of these institutions. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM) to understand the hierarchy of the factors and their interplay using response from 18 experts in the domain. Findings The findings reveal that autonomy and accountability coupled with availability of sustainable funds are the driving factors for the success of the institutions. Infrastructural facilities and establishment of centers of excellence act as amplification factors. Introduction of new programs and their accreditation, improvement in faculty quality, research output and improvement in performance of academically weak students emerge as process factors that drive the output factors, namely, academic performance and student placement. Research limitations/implications The major limitation of this study is the scope that was limited to 191 institutions, as mandated in the project. Practical implications This study has important implications for the institutions as well as the policy makers to channelize their focus and efforts on driving and amplification factors that would ultimately lead to enhanced performance of the next generation higher technical education institutions. Originality/value This paper is a part of pan India project carried out to assess the performance of higher technical education institutions in India.

Factors influencing organizational agility in higher education

“…Some of the studies that applied TISM, particularly in the manufacturing sector, involved the understanding of the interplay between the enablers in flexible manufacturing (Jain and Soni, 2019), sustainable manufacturing (Agrawal and Vinodh, 2019; Dwivedi et al , 2019), lean performance (Solke and Singh, 2018), agile manufacturing (Sindhwani and Malhotra, 2017) and leagile manufacturing (Chaple et al , 2018). Lately, TISM application has found grounding in supply chain management (Soda et al , 2018; Lamba and Singh, 2018), healthcare (Vaishnavi et al , 2019; Ajmera and Jain, 2019; Mishra and Satapathy, 2019; Patri and Suresh, 2017), telecommunication (Jena et al , 2016), aviation (Singh and Sushil, 2013), pharmaceutical (Wasuja et al , 2012) and higher education (Menon and Suresh, 2020; Kashiramka et al , 2019; Yeravdekar and Behl, 2017; Sehgal and Nasim, 2018; Voolaid and Ehrlich, 2017).…”

Modelling the enablers of sustainability in higher education institutions

“…The study identified leadership, human resource strategies and organizational structure as crucial enablers that can facilitate higher education agility (Menon and Suresh, 2020c). A study by Kashiramka et al (2019) on factors critical for the success of technical educational institutions revealed autonomy and accountability and availability of sustainable funds are the crucial drivers. Sehgal and Nasim (2018) identified technical knowledge, management skills and communication skills as strong employability predictors for graduates seeking employment in the information technology sector.…”

Enablers of workforce agility in engineering educational institutions

“…Learning new technological skills enables the faculty members to use them in teachinglearning, collaborating with others inside and outside the institution and for other administrative purposes (Keengwe et al, 2009;Romeu et al, 2016;McCully and McDaniel, 2007), equipping the faculty take up different roles. Autonomy in education gives freedom to the faculty members in designing and developing new programs/courses that are in streamline with industry requirements (Kashiramka et al, 2019) and adopting new instructional, assessment and evaluation tools. Freedom at job encourages faculty members to acquire and refresh knowledge and skills to be able to carry out the activities effectively.…”