Abstract
The increasing rate of private higher education institutions in Ghana has called for the need to research into the quality management methods for their credibility. The government is giving out less funding and thus losing steering capacity. Public universities are unable to provide placements for all qualifying students in the institutions and therefore private universities have come to the aid of the public universities. The aim of the research is to find out the quality management methods that private higher education institutions involve themselves with in steering their institutions. It will also look superficially at what the national systems put in place to manage them and what it has to do with the management methods of these institutions. The All Nations University College (ANUC) was chosen as the research sample out of all private universities in Ghana. The methodology used to pursue this objective was qualitative in nature and based on semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. In all eight respondents were purposefully selected from specific units within the university for the study. The study revealed that ANUC has quite a young Quality Assurance (QA) system. This system is doing its possible best to ensure quality in the institution. However, it depicts a control-oriented approach to its management system. The contents of the system seem to be more pedagogically focused but with few signs of routines that provide staff with feedback and much seems geared towards control. It also seems that the QA Department is operating in a quite autonomous way. The study also revealed that private universities aim at satisfying external accreditation demands and that means that controlling quality "works" in the country for private sector. Also a recommendation that, 'private universities in general could also adopt the strategy of providing attractive courses like ANUC is doing, that will benefit students on the job market so that societal problems can be addressed in the country' was made. Research development was also seen as an area of concern where quality management should focus on in private universities. The study also revealed that quality management should be dealt with in every aspect of managing the institutions, be it curriculum designing, employability skills and so forth. Lastly, the study revealed that in order to attain quality, a result-oriented approach instead of a control-oriented approach should be adopted as well as ensuring a reliable and quick feedback system.