A student is like a customer in that she is paying for a
particular service to be provided, and often going into dangerous amounts of
debt to do so, especially in the case of for-profit colleges (though rising
costs are not limited to for-profits).
She deserves readily returned phone calls and emails, thoughtful
feedback on work, clear standards set and readings and assignments that are up
to date and which speak to course objectives.
Especially at the graduate level, which I teach, he deserves mentoring,
experiential learning opportunities, opportunities to network and for
professional exposure and development.
Yet the similarities between a student and a customer end
there, revealing the limitations of this analogy that regrettably seems to
drive the direction of change in higher education today. In debating what sort of changes are best, we
often fail to remember that our choice doesn’t have to be between the status
quo and market-driven reforms; other reforms
are possible and needed.
So then, while the comparison of a student to a customer has
some utility, what does this analogy miss?
How is a student not like a customer?
The most key point here is that learning is a process, not a
product. The process of learning may
well (and should) continue long after the “product” of a class or a degree is
delivered. In addition, with the
consumer/business owner relationship, the consumer rarely co-constructs the end
product, let alone the process involved in delivery. Even with engaged-consumer models in which
businesses try to involve consumers in marketing or advertising via social
media, this cannot be compared with the co-construction of learning in which
students may co-create educational goals along with faculty, produce knowledge
in partnership with them and meaningfully self-assess. This is especially, though one hopes not
exclusively, true of adult learners.
Secondly, the purpose of one’s relationship with a customer,
it is fair to say, is to make a profit.
Of course any institution of higher education needs to be financially
healthy, but unless you are a for-profit university (many of which are now
currently under federal investigation), the relationship between a professor
and student ought not to be motivated by money, but rather out of a desire to
mentor and support the student.
Professors and students alike are responsible for building classroom
community. While the financial pressure
universities are under in the current economy has been observed countless
times, most faculty would object rather passionately to compromising
educational goals, and the student experience, for financial purposes. By contrast, profit is of course the reason
businesses exist.
Moreover, students, unlike customers, are simply not always
right. (The same could be said of
faculty.) Perhaps Starbucks did not
mistake my order; they are likely to replace my drink regardless if I’m unhappy
with it. The same of course cannot be
said of all students, some of whom are at times unhappy with a grade, the
volume of reading or a challenging and uncomfortable discussion.
Consider the sanctions of a professor
in MN who was teaching about structural racism and was reported to the
administration by three of her white, male students. This is where I see the difference between a
student and a customer most starkly. Many students welcome uncomfortable and
controversial dialogues and experiences that take them out of their comfort
zone; others, perhaps especially those
most socially privileged, do not. Yet facilitating
such dialogues and designing such experiences remains an essential task of
effective faculty—especially when one teaches conflict resolution as I do.
The task of maintaining a meaningful research agenda
highlights another area of higher education where an exclusively business model
or culture fails us. Conducting research
demands intellectual freedom and autonomy, whereas employees in a corporation
are simply expected to complete their task as asked. Any given faculty member can share an example
of censorship, or attempted censorship, reinforcing the need for a commitment
to academic freedom. Most recently, I
can recall a meeting a new colleague at the International Studies Association
2015 conference who told me her environmental science colleagues at her
Oklahoma university were under a gag order from the Dean as pertains to
research which drew connections between fracking and the rise in earthquakes in
the Midwestern U.S. My own area of
research, peace and conflict resolution, is by nature controversial and
emotional, and sometimes unavoidably political, making this distinction between
the mission of a business and the mission of a university important to my
research personally.
This brings me to a
final aspect where students differ considerably from customers: the job of education is not merely to provide
workers and employees for the economy, though that is one critical
contribution. It is also to, along with
families and other social institutions, shape citizens for a healthy and free
democracy. These two goals are not, as I
view it, inherently in conflict, but can become so when higher education
policies lose sight of the latter to pursue the former. To
maximize learning and professional benefits for students, ultimately we must
understand them perhaps as customers in a limited sense, but indeed as much
more than that.
