FYI from a professional development listserv:
on 5/28/03 1:16 PM, Russ
> It seems to me the original remark had to do not with whether we do,
> or should, think of students as customers, but whether they think of
> themselves that way. (If one doesn't, she's remarkably resistant to
> manipulation: every policy decision about funding of higher education
> I've witnessed in the last decade or so has been designed to promote
> this view.)
>
>> Maybe instead of thinking of students as customers we should consider
>> basic adult learning theory (Knowles).
>
> And I think there's a further, equally important question: what do
> they think they're buying?
About ten years ago, I made my own comment on this "student as customer"
issue in a chapter on student management teams in Bill Campbell's and
Karl Smith's New Paradigms for College Teaching INteraction Book Co.,
1997):
" 'The Students are our Customers:' Management Perverted
...."Customer satisfaction " was obviously related to the quality of a
product or service, and it became a central goal for some of the best
known corporations (Peters and Waterman, 1982). It wasn't long before
"The student-is-our-customer" jingle began to be heard with increasing
frequency within the ivory towers.... Corporations focus on customers
and products; in higher education students should not be considered as
customers or products. It is more useful to consider students as
colleagues (Langford, 1993; Nuhfer, 1994). Corporations exist because of
customer demand and are supported by profits from customers.
Universities exist because of societal demand and are supported by a
society that desires skilled, educated participants. Tuitions of
students currently present at a university are minuscule contributions
when compared to society's cumulative investments in the institution.
Customers usually have little vested interest in the ethics or
atmosphere inside the corporate environment, and certainly do not form
quality circles to address these issues. Students, like faculty and
unlike customers, are inside the teaching-learning environment. They
have an inherent interest in the processes that occur there. The true
customer is society in general, including employers, alumni, and future
students. There are rarely consequences to customers if they reject a
product. On the other hand, if students "reject the product" by cutting
classes, or by otherwise not giving sufficient effort, then society is
harmed through having to absorb poorly prepared participants. When
students abrogate their responsibilities, the same harm occurs to
society as occurs when professors give only half-hearted efforts to
teach effectively<we are colleagues in more ways than we realize.
Individual student responsibility has been outlined eloquently and in
detail by Ellis (1994), but the popular concept of individual
responsibility (Davis and Murrell, 1993) is understood as assuring one's
own success in procuring skills and knowledge. Students' social
responsibility for improving their own institution's teaching and
learning environment is a concept that most college administrators have
failed to grasp, let alone promote. Student management teams stress
student responsibility. They enable an understanding of responsibility,
both personal and social, through experience of both the labor and
benefits."
-------------------------
My views haven't changed much since this was printed in 1997. Where
students are "customers," they are not seen as part of the working class
involved in education. The "student as customer" image infects students
with a belief that they should be passive recipients of a product.
I read in a student self reflection journal a short time ago: "I should
be able to just sit, listen, and pass." The student was irate about
having to do things like write, think, and in essence--work. Such
statements reflect a value system that is actively being promoted by the
champions of students as customers; ideas like that student expressed
above just don't appear spontaneously --they are learned.
Ed
------------------------------------------------------------newfaculty-+
You have received this message because you are subscribed to this mailing list. If you wish to be removed from this list, please send an email (in PLAIN TEXT) to:
listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Leave your subject line blank and in the body of the message, type:
unsub NEWFACULTY
Or, you may choose to send an email to (a real human being): listmgr@lists.wcu.edu.
------------------------------------------------------------newfaculty--
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 05/29/03 EDT