The implementation of total quality management (TQM) has been widely adopted by several organizations of different sectors, with the goal of obtaining a competitive advantage in relation to their rivals. Likewise, higher education has grown the interest in adopting this methodology with the purpose of attracting increasingly more students for their institutions. However, after a literature review, several obstacles were revealed when trying to implement TQM in this sector, since some of its important concepts do not adjust to the specific requirements of the education sector. This document presents, on the one hand, a comparison between the countries with most ISO 9001 certifications and a world ranking of the best universities, proving that there is no relation between quality certifications and performance of the universities. On the other hand, quality tools are analyzed and it is decided which of them could be used to create proposals for implementing, in a better way, the TQM in educational institutions and obtaining a real impact in their performance.