In adopting a customer‐oriented approach to higher education, quality function deployment (QFD) is one of the total quality management techniques which can be applied for process and design improvement. Following a review of some practices in this sector, this paper outlines a QFD model in which the opinions of three groups of customers are utilized for quality planning. A developed framework for the dimensions of quality in engineering education was used in conjunction with the quality processes in a departmental quality management framework proposed by the Engineering Professors’ Council. The results from the QFD led to a strategy for prioritizing the different quality processes within a school/department.