Student, or customer? (Feedback).I read with considerable interest your editorial ["I Spy I spy is a guessing game usually played in families with young children, partly to assist in both observation and in alphabet familiarity. I spy is often played as a car game. a Customer"] in the March 2003 issue. As an academic and administrator with a background in the public and private sectors, as well as the military, I certainly share the philosophy of melding best business practices with higher education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. management. Let's face it, education is big business and the industry is growing each year. However, to treat students as "customers" can have a deleterious deleterious adj. harmful. effect on academic quality as well as credibility. Many students enroll in specific institutions because of the status of those institutions. And, for many, the costs of attending college drive the decision as to where to enroll. But, the bottom line is that in the business world, customer satisfaction is paramount, and processes are engineered to ensure the needs of the customer are met. When it comes to education, particularly higher education, many students would prefer to complete the process as fast as possible and with the minimum pain necessary. This translates to "cutting corners" wherever possible, which is reflected by the plagiarism Using ideas, plots, text and other intellectual property developed by someone else while claiming it is your original work. we read about so often. If students are to be treated as customers in the business sense, colleges and universities wit[ have to make their programs more attractive and easier. Many students are not motivated mo·ti·vate tr.v. mo·ti·vat·ed, mo·ti·vat·ing, mo·ti·vates To provide with an incentive; move to action; impel. mo by receiving an excellent education, per se, but rather by the credentials CREDENTIALS, international law. The instruments which authorize and establish a public minister in his character with the state or prince to whom they are addressed. If the state or prince receive the minister, he can be received only in the quality attributed to him in his credentials. that the education provides. Thus, they want it fast and cheap. We can certainly use best business practices to run our institutions, but we also need to be wary of believing that higher education is solely a business and neglect the academic standards that produce better informed and more productive citizens. DR. JOSEPH GALIOTO, Campus Dean, Manassas Strayer University Strayer University, formerly Strayer College of Washington, D. C., is a private, for-profit educational institution. The Strayer University campuses are owned by Strayer Education, Inc., headquartered in Arlington, VA. Strayer Education, Inc. Manassas, VA I enjoyed your article in the March UB. I am the business manager at Baker College of Jackson. I wanted to add a single point to your article: that there are internal and external customers to view. The external customers are the students (if you choose to view them in that fashion). The internal customers are the employees, departments, and faculty that interact with each other on a daily basis. These internal customers' ability to serve each other at the highest level will only increase the overall customer service provided to the student. In your article, you hinted toward that point with the academic side of higher education. CRAIG TAPLEY, Business Manager Baker College of Jackson Jackson Jackson Jackson is a hip-hop group from Melbourne, Australia with members Harry James Angus (vocals/trumpet; The Cat Empire, The Conglomerate) and Jan Skubiszewski (producer, phrase, and composer; APRA Award winner Two Hands, The Rage In Placid Lake, Last Man Standing). , MI 
Student as customer? There are many ways one could look at this. Returning to the role of college student after nearly twenty years was a shock. There seems to be more of a devotion to getting published and winning research grants now than a desire to serve the students best interests. One thing which might help, is to continue the comparison. Yes there are students who just want a piece of paper. There are also other students who actually desire knowledge.<br><br> Continuing the comparison, there are hungry customers out there who want something to eat. Some of them want fast and edible, in either their car, or a noisy fast food joint with a brat filled playground nearby, all served by slightly older brats who would much rather be texting or playing video games. Others want a delicious, well orchestrated meal in a wonderful atmosphere, with polite experienced service. I feel the correlation between these two types of customers and the two main types of students as customers, can easily be drawn. <br><br> Colleges are a strange business. There is one other customer. The corporations and employers who hire the product which is in itself also a customer. A college which decided what niche in the market they wanted to address and stuck to it would provide an appropriate level of depth of knowledge to their student customer. Employer customers would hire the student customers which best fit company needs and pay them accordingly. The internal customer's job would be streamlined by knowing that their service was to a narrower range of customer and therefore greater specialization would be possible. A narrower customer base doesn't have to mean a smaller one. It means that faculty who feel deep knowledge based understanding would be teaching students who felt the need for more than just a document, and those students, customers in themselves, a sort of graduate product, would be hired by companies who wanted to pay the worth of such a graduate product. Conversely, faculty who didn't have that drive would be dealing with students who either didn't feel deep understanding was necessary to their future, or just wanted a quick and mostly painless experience to provide a piece of paper to say they knew what they were already doing. This graduate product would be of interest to employers with limited budgets and also employers who just needed people with a general base knowledge that they could train in knowledge specific to that company. An overall increase in efficiency could result from this sort of specialization.<br><br>Thank you for your time<br><br> |
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