Further FYI
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Lyons Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 7:24 PM
Subject: Re: students as customers
Arguably the most intensive, broadly-contributed interchange on the
listserv in quite some time, this issue needs to get past the tired,
simplistic dynamic that Joe so passionately illuminates. If we step
back and look at the debate with some perspective, two passages from
Teaching College in an Age of Accountability might be perceived by many
as providing insight:
Market Pressures
Along with the rise in the consumer mind-set, students, parents and
employers began to demand increased value from their investments in
education. Nearly all institutions installed student ratings of faculty
and courses. While once reserved for instructional decision makers, the
findings of student ratings have been ever more widely disseminated -
most recently online to increasingly technology-savvy student-consumers.
U.S. News and World Report annually publishes a highly popular special
edition that ranks institutions on such critical student satisfaction
factors as percentages of classes with fewer than 20 students and
freshmen retention rates. Although publications like the Petersen's
college guides have long existed, they along with a number of online
ratings services are now providing rankings based on a widening array of
factors.
Many highly rated institutions, and their faculty members, initially
resisted consumer-driven incursions into their cultures, but have now
come to embrace such evaluations for their own benefit. One need not
look far to see U.S. News and other ratings featured in institutions'
print and online marketing efforts, with the marketing objective of
differentiating their "product" from that of others in the increasingly
competitive higher education marketplace. Some of the leading
institutions recruit the "best" students as aggressively as the best
athletes, in hopes of also making themselves more attractive to second
echelon students, and to potential donors interested in winning more
than football bowl games or NCAA Final Four basketball tournament
appearances.
Over the past few years, for-profit institutions, most notably the
rapidly expanding University of Phoenix, have begun to have a dramatic
impact on the delivery of higher education. Employing a "skimming"
strategy, they typically target the most lucrative market segment - the
increasing numbers of bright working professionals who are older than
the traditional student and who are willing to juggle an array of
responsibilities as they pursue degrees in highly popular disciplines
such as business, technology, and health care. Regionally accredited
"for profits" have developed "campuses" in urban and suburban office
parks, and typically offer classes in an accelerated format that
students interested in rapid achievement perceive as more convenient and
manageable. Their classes are typically highly standardized - in
contrast to those at traditional institutions that emphasize academic
freedom - with few gaps or overlaps in content from one course in each
curriculum to the next.
The courses at the for-profits are usually facilitated by adjunct
professors employed full-time in their areas of specialization - which
most of their students see as a benefit. The for-profits typically
invest heavily in the training and development of their part-time
instructors, minimizing many of the problems encountered by traditional
institutions that view the employment of part-time faculty as a
cost-saving but necessary evil. Students at for-profits typically expect
their courses to mirror the fields in which they work or aspire to work
more closely than courses at traditional institutions do. The success
of the highly competitive for-profits - especially measured by student
enrollment in the most popular degree programs - has been nothing short
of phenomenal (Borrego, 2001).
In need of employees with cutting-edge skills, team-oriented attitudes,
and a vision of the future (Senge, 1990), and less than satisfied with
the return of the millions of dollars they have invested in higher
education, over two thousand businesses have established their own
"corporate universities." Such initiatives represent a very
significant, long-term commitment for the corporations and their
hundreds of thousands of employees. In their efforts, administrators of
corporate universities have become increasingly mindful of the array of
benefits, e.g. portability and integrity of coursework, from
accreditation of their educational programs. Many have thus aligned
themselves with established colleges or universities, or have sought
accreditation in their own right. While the full impact of corporate
universities on traditional institutions has yet to be played out, their
active presence in the culture of higher education is certain to feed
higher accountability standards (Meister, 2001).
Forward-looking traditional institutions have responded to the
increasingly competitive threat from the for-profits and corporate
universities, by targeting a similar upscale, fully-employed,
nontraditionally aged market, while maintaining a portion of the
traditional academic culture. Because such programming has proved
highly popular and financially-rewarding, institutions have redirected
resources toward its expansion, while also closely assessing degree
programs whose productivity is problematic in comparison. Not
surprisingly, friction has developed between departments that generate
significant income and those who do not.
As other products and services in the economy have become available
24/7/365, demand for quality college instruction that can be delivered
to
time- and place-bound students has also increased. Many institutions -
led by the for-profits - have responded with a variety of distance
education initiatives. In some cases, they have formed creative
consortia to reduce costs and enhance their marketing clout through
offering "branded products." While early distance-learning efforts were
of relatively poor quality, and thus easy targets for criticism by
educational traditionalists, such programs have greatly improved in the
past few years. The highly competitive, financially rewarding
instructional software industry has invested large sums in research and
development and is now providing interactive products that are far more
student friendly than courses delivered in many regular classrooms,
especially those presented in lecture halls seating hundreds of
disengaged students.
Along the way, both business leaders who were grounded in the principles
of total quality management and mindful of the importance of a well-
educated workforce and parents, who were suffering from "sticker shock,"
began to assert that they had a stake in the colleges and universities
they supported through taxes, tuition payments, and gifts. Armed with
data on such wasteful practices as high dropout rates in expensive
programs (Lovitts and Nelson, 2000) and excessive credit hours
accumulated by students, these powerful stakeholder groups began calling
on their state legislators and institutional boards of trustees to
justify tuition increases, and to provide more effectively taught
classes, more student-friendly practices and processes, more efficient
articulation between institutions, and more comprehensive support
services. Mindful of the growing number of term-limit initiatives,
governors, legislators and other elected officials have responded to
these demands more immediately than predecessors ever did (Ewell and
Jones, 1994).
Thinking of Students as Clients
A sure way to get up the ire of many professors is to launch a
discussion of some dimension of students being consumers, customers, or
clients. Those opposed to that paradigm often cite reasons such as the
following:
. Our college (or university) is not a business. We teach, not "train,"
and therefore we should not "service." We are not a factory that turns
out products. . The legislature (or the trustees) and parents pay the
bills; therefore, if we have any clients, it is they. . Knowledge isn't
a product to be sold. . If I treat students like clients, then I will
have to lower my standards, give them grades they do not deserve,
entertain them, resist challenging their existing beliefs, or otherwise
lower my standards. . The business/client model is an insult to which I
will not even respond. (Slaughter, 2001).
At the opposite end of the continuum are those who support the paradigm
of students' being clients, and who suggest the following:
. A college (or university) has both fixed and variable expenses that
must be offset through sufficient tuition revenues. Such revenues can
be generated only by meeting the expectations of those who register for
our classes. . Like any revenue-producing organization, colleges and
universities have an array of clients, but the most critical are those
who register for its classes. When they are not pleased with the
quality of the "product" or "service" they receive, they will make that
fact known to external stakeholders who will come to their support. .
Physicians, architects, engineers, attorneys, writers, and other
professionals market their knowledge to clients with the expectation of
receiving prestige and financial rewards in return. Professors today
are not significantly different. . The quality movement in business has
demonstrated that retaining customers over the long term requires
raising standards rather than lowering them. . Although, admittedly,
there are some unsavory businesses, much of the success of our society
is attributable to the entrepreneurial, profit-achieving strategies of
businesses, each of which is predicated on the requirement to meet or
exceed their clients' expectations.
Leading faculty members is sometimes described as similar to "herding
cats." Ours is a fiercely independent profession, and most of us thrive
on intellectual challenges (Bowen, 2001). Probably somewhere between
the two polarized positions outlined above is one that you can
articulate for yourself that will enable you to achieve consistency in
your approach to students.
When we have presented the suggestions in this chapter to veteran
professors, we have commonly received feedback such as "We haven't had
to do this before," or "Do these changes coddle students?" We agree
that many professors have never before looked at their students as
clients, but perhaps had we been more fully meeting students' needs
previously, the approach we are suggesting now would not seem like
coddling. Again, the bigger picture is that the environment of higher
education, like that of so many other institutions, has fundamentally
changed. When leading institutions change the way they teach to more
effectively accommodate the needs of students, competition dictates that
others must adapt. As Spencer Johnson stated in his best-selling book
Who Moved My Cheese? (1999),
"If you do not change, you could become extinct" (p. 46).
Richard Lyons, Lead Author
----- Original Message -----
From: "LaLopa, Joseph" <lalopaj@CFS.PURDUE.EDU>
To: <POD@LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 4:50 PM
Subject: Re: [POD] students as customers
> If students are not customers as some of you contend, why is it that
Universities spend so much on marketing and sales to court their
parent's dollars? The fact is they can choose which educational service
they want to consume to get a degree making them a customer. Those that
do not do well by their students lose them, via word-of-mouth and the
internet, to others who choose to do a better job -- just like
businesses in the private sector. They are also sophisticated enough to
determine which faculty member is given them high quality instructional
services versus those who do not making them smart shoppers.
>
> They also remember how badly they were treated when regarded as a
"product" and get revenge when they can turn down those calling or
e-mailing them seeking contributions for their "beloved" alma mater.
>
> I am so tired of this debate because I have noticed a common thread
amongst those who do not view students as customers. They tend to be
arrogant, pompous, academics who think that because they know more than
students (which is their job) that somehow means that students must bow
before them and accept abusive, lackluster, instructional services.
Afterall, they took the abuse from their professors and they "turned out
okay." Not!
>
> I, for one, was subjected to some of the worst teaching and personal
> abuse
by arrogant professors on my way toward getting my Ph.D. I am sure that
every one of you on this list can say the same. That is why I will
never repeat the ignorance of professors past and have chosen instead to
treat my students as customers. As my customers, they deserve my best
(even when they make me crazy) and so I will forever seek to improve my
instructional and advising services. It may also explain why my wall is
adorned with teaching awards and those who treat students as "products"
are not.
>
> Joe La Lopa
> Purdue University
>
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