1. Why is it important to get the customer's assessment of education quality? Does a student have the expertise to judge the studies, he or she receives?

Founded in 2008, TEU is a privately-owned, multi-specialty University. TEU is surrounded by all affluent urban/suburban communities with an educated population composed largely of employees of the Indian government and multinational engineering firms. TEU, with 900 employees, provides a range of educa- tional degrees and diplomas, including MBA, B.E., BDS, MDS, BBA, Polytechnic Diplomas, B.Arch., MBBS, MD, MS, etc. In January 2009, the University began a series of advertisements highlighting its qualified and experienced faculty, friendly support staff and overall philosophy that its employees are concerned to the work and the students. Assessing Quality Education Quality Education is a goal to be judged from the education the students perceive. A tremendous amount of effort has been devoted to assess the quality output of studies. The problem, however, is that past efforts to measure University quality have largely ignored the perceptions of customers. Instead of formally con- sidering customer judgments of quality, the education industry has focused on internal quality assessments that ignored the voice of customer. TEU's philosophy is to ensure quality to measuring and improving the quality of studies from both the ex- ternal, customer perspective and the internal, provider perspective along with simultaneous concern about costs and greater social accountability. There is an emerging demand by students that quality education be provided at its best value. As board president Dr. Rangnathan recently stated at the annual TEU meeting: "As the price people pay for given levels of service has become more or less similar, institutions will be distinguished on the basis of their quality and value as perceived by customers. Many institutions have already some methods for measuring student satisfaction. Typically, the surveys are distributed at the time of award of degree to students, who are free to respond or not. The main value of such surveys is to gain quick knowledge of problems experienced by students."