QUALITY TOOLS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

In the latest years, the development and the application of Quality Programs to educational systems and also to engineering courses has been often discussed. These programs aim at applying basic concepts of Total Quality to the structure of teaching activities and to the way they are functioning. The purpose of the programs is, of course, to improve such courses. This paper tries to develop a critical analysis of these experiences, considering mainly the report of personnel involved in the subject. The quality models of some Brazilian universities are considered. The evaluation applied to the models tries to emphasize situations where the results obtained are not the desired ones. These cases have had some failures during the application of the program. We have carried out the analysis of causes, circumstances, situations or accidental aspects that have contributed for critical problems and we propose some actions to avoid them. 1