I am interested in this topic, as I think the metaphor of student as customer is inaccurate and damaging in many ways. Ultimately, it is unnecessary as the term "student" exists and can include implications of customer-like expectations, etc. On the other hand, the term "customer" strips away several of the responsibilities associated with being a "student." It sidesteps the fact that students are paying for nothing more than an opportunity to work hard and learn under the guidance of a professional, and it

simplifies, if not banalizes, the fundamental type of interaction (it's not a "transaction," after all!) that occurs in a learning institution. A consumer model might in the future lead to a reduction of General Education requirements, or a re-ordering of requirements within courses--after all, what sane consumer would "buy" ten weeks of sometimes stressful exposure to content or skills that they aren't initially interested in?

This issue is an example of the proliferation of a marketing/business philosophy into areas where it doesn't belong and won't operate well. In terms of the top-level management and financial accounting of the college, business principles are necessary (though never as relevant as in a real business, and in an organizational sense I think they get less useful as you move closer to the academic units, where things often don't work like a business at all). Some business techniques, such as "customer service" training, might in an academic adaptation find limited use among staff who have more cursory interaction with students than do the faculty. But let's not lead our students astray with borrowed semantics. The "customer" model is not generally useful to describe interactions that occur between students and instructors; and, after all, the learning experience is by far the most extensive and significant experience the students will have at the college. Educational institutions already have in place terminology and processes to describe what goes on, and history shows they are flexible enough to accommodate changes and prevailing (trendy?) attitudes without transforming into something they're not. And as one of my colleagues said in a sidewalk conversation yesterday, "This is NOT a Sears Roebuck."

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J.M. Simpson, History
Pierce College

The metaphor of community and technical colleges as providers of services and the students as customers is very apt. Indeed, community and technical colleges ignore this dynamic at their peril.

A community college student who works full time came by early one evening to be advised before registering for classes. The person at the registration window told the student that she could not be advised, that there were already too many people signed up for advising, and that she would have to take time from her job to come back and register.

Not happy with the response, the student picked up a flyer, which stated that extra staff were available at such times to advise students prior to registering.

"Where are the extra advisors?" she asked. "If this is the way this college treats its customers, then it probably won't have any students registering."

The person at the registration window did not agree. "This college does not have customers."

If students are treated as though they are not customers, they will go elsewhere. The aforementioned student did.

It is commonly understood that community and technical colleges provide an array of educational and/or vocational products. These products, ranging from financial aid and advising to classes in ESL and dental hygiene, are offered by courteous, intelligent and well-versed staff and instructors. Like many good businesses, community and technical colleges are proud of what their faculty and staff do in presenting to the students the means by which they can learn from these educational and/or vocational experiences.

Students pay for this product; therefore, they are the customers. If a community or technical college consistently provides good customer service in line with its academic and vocational offerings, then students will pay to attend.

Furthermore, as students experience good educational and customer service at a community or technical college, local businesses will take note. For example, students who complete an academic or vocational program in a customer friendly and academically challenging environment are going to communicate that message to their employers. Businesses will be more apt to send employees to a community or technical colleges for training. The reason for this is clear – business people keenly understand the dynamic of good customer relations -- and so should community and technical colleges.

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Fran Collins, Developmental Education
Clark College

While I would agree that college faculty are here to serve students, I believe that there are several aspects of education that do not at all match a business-customer model in which a business is an active provider to a customer who is a passive recipient of goods and services. In my opinion, optimal learning experiences come from faculty working in partnership with students. The students must be active participants in the learning process in order to receive maximum benefits. Interaction and cooperation with faculty and one another empower students to become independent learners and doers.

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George Darkenwald, Paralegal Program
South Puget Sound Community College

Excellent idea. How often I've heard and often given what I consider excellent business advice: "The customer is always right."

Customers, clients, patients -- they not only grade us, they pay our rent, and it's a major mistake to forget that. And complaints about "customer" service, or lack of, multiply geometrically; compliments reach far fewer ears.

But my college professors and law professors, not to mention my flight instructors -- authority figures all and rightly so -- neither marketed to me nor solicited my critique.

Are knowledge and information, much less a love of learning and maybe a little wisdom, products we dispense and sell to consumers, or treasures we are privileged to share? Before I get too philosophical, one image from memory: the furious flight instructor cussing me as he grabbed the controls before I killed us both. Of course flight schools have to market too and be consumer friendly, or they'll go out of business. Enough for now.

Thanks for the pebble in the pond.

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Raymond Korpi
English Clark College

Students are customers outside the classroom, but they are not customers when they are in the classroom. I am expected to do a good job as a faculty member, but I also must judge student performances, which is diametrically opposed to the salesperson-customer relationship. I do have to sell the students on my subject to keep them interested, but the ultimate responsibility for their education in the classroom is their own.

Now, when I put on a different hat, say advisor or tutor, then the students are my customers; and I want to do my absolute level best in answering their questions as I am NOT judging them at that point.

Perhaps the most important way to think of it is that we would not have these reasonably well-paying jobs with reasonable benefits without students, but education is also the responsibility of the individual and the student must bear that burden. A customer does not have so much invested as a student.

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Barbara L. Clinton, Speech
Highline Community College

Students are the customers. How many different times have we been told that? We hear it from administrators, faculty, and community members. I hear colleagues grumble about this metaphor while musing around the coffee pot, but I have no complaints with it--that is, so long as we extend the figure of speech to define just what business these customers patronize.

I have students who think this customer label gives them a "fast food" relationship to their education. I, as the teacher, become the short order cook. It is my job to sauté up the McNuggets of information, or worse yet of wisdom, slather them with a choice of enticing sauces, and keep them warm until the customer, almost unwittingly, gives in to hunger. I think not. My subject matter is recognized in the world of human relations to be worth too much, to be far too "gourmet," to be cannibalized in such a manner.

Other students succumb to the Nordstrom's model of education. They pay their money in exchange for a set of credits. In fact, if these credits don't wear well in the business world, students in some states are asking for refunds. Again, I think not. Education is not a pair of shoes to be walked on, found pinching, and returned almost un-used.

In my classroom I offer another version of this metaphor. My students are, indeed, customers. In fact, they are my own valued customers. But in my personal model they are the customers at my intellectual health club. Their tuition payment doesn't entitle them to nuggets of wisdom or the apparel of learning. All their tuition buys them is membership--membership in an elite club. No health club membership guarantees a person lower body fat or increased muscle mass. No health club promises a faster mile or a stronger swing. Instead, such membership, if it's a quality club, offers a wide array of equipment and vigilant supervision from a knowledgeable coach.

My intellectual health club is built on the same model. Payment buys a student's way into an elite atmosphere, resplendent with an array of equipment and a staff of skillful coaches. For those willing to come to our classes, use our library, computer lab, and tutoring centers, put in the time and accept the direction, the gain is immeasurable. These are my customers. I welcome them each class to my private gym, tell them that they are my customers and are lucky enough to have me as their personal trainer, and invite them to get ready to sweat.

I love my customers. And most of them seem to end up loving their coach.

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Donna Roberge, Social Sciences
Clark College

I think the customer metaphor does drive better policy and puts the interactive components in a model that delineates responsibilities and rights. It will place more accountability upon the institution's employees at all levels to meet the needs of the customer/clients. I would urge that we add what the accountabilities are for the student-customers as well, as this is, again, an interactive model. Sometimes in the larger society, the "customer is always right" may not be applicable across the board in an institution of higher learning.

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Nancy Elliott, Developmental English/ABE
South Puget Sound Community College

Calling students customers makes about as much sense as calling patients in a hospital guests, and some hospitals are doing just that.

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James Newbill, History
Yakima Valley College

Since some students may choose one college or another, most students expect a product, often tangible, for their tuition, and all pay money for the "product," one might use the commercial term "customer" to describe our students.

However, there are two basic differences between the commercial and the educational process that make "customer" inappropriate. One is related to the word, "product." The problem, at least in the Humanities, is that there is no tangible "thing" gained. For example, in contrast to courses in Police Science or Dental Hygiene or even English composition where specific goals and techniques are devised and, presumably, somewhat accurately measured, the goal of courses in literature, history, anthropology, and philosophy is not the mastery of an intricate body of material, (although "facts" are integral to the activity) but, rather, the developing of attitudes, of new, more sophisticated thinking techniques. One might say that practical, goal-oriented courses are often narrowing–one learns more and more about less and less–in order to earn more and more, while the liberal arts courses are aimed at breaking down our natural provincialism, so that one becomes less dogmatic, more willing to examine the many ideas and customs of others and other eras. But such valuable accomplishments cannot always be clearly seen, even by the teacher let alone by the student. Only the years of experience will reveal whether these "products" are being used. So, the Liberal Arts produce no "products," in the commercial sense. And, no products, no "customer."

The second weakness is that "customer" implies a significant knowledge on the part of the purchaser. Most people will pay some attention to the various aspects of the different $35,000 automobiles before parting with that much cash. Even the simple expenditure of $1.50 for a Baskin & Robbins ice cream cone is based on our experience with flavors and ice cream texture. We know what tastes good in ice cream. But, even though the new freshmen have had 12 years of education, that experience is so thin that they are virtually ignorant of what is involved in a college course, even in those academic fields with the same names as those taken in high school. Thus, they may expect history to be the memorization of facts or the recounting of some amusing anecdotes. Psychology is seen, not as a science, but as a subject dealing with bizarre personalities which appeal to voyeuristic inclinations. Philosophy might be expected to be unstructured bull-sessions, about the good or the bad. Such uninformed students could hardly be called "customers," at least not well-informed customers.

The point is that to treat the students as "customers" is to suggest (1) the wrong purposes for their college education, especially as related to the liberal arts courses, and (2) that these students rarely understand the intricacies of disciplines which have taken scholars many decades to explore. Sure, the student-customer should expect specific material in Introduction to Computers or College Algebra or Anatomy and Physiology, but students can never really be a customer in the usual sense of the word in that they have only the vaguest idea of the "product." Thus, the professional scholar/teacher has the obligation to lift the students above being mere materialistic "customers." They must be enticed, led, inspired, even propelled out of their commercial cave of shadows where everyone is too often blissfully contented with the narrow "customer mentality." Colleges, worthy of their Liberal Arts offerings, must not be reduced into using the terminology (and the philosophy) of the trade schools and business colleges. The latter have their legitimate roles. But colleges and universities must not attempt to duplicate them by treating their students simply as "customers."

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Yvette O’Neill, Art/French
Lower Columbia College

Home, Sick, with Gabriela Mistral

Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga was born in Vicuna, Chile, in 1889. As a poet, she used the name Gabriela Mistral. She moved to the United States at the end of her life and lived near me in Roslyn when I was a child, but I didn't know of her then. I was focused on sidewalks, my ankles scabbed by pigeon toes in heavy shoes with sharp metal buckles, searching for the perfect chain laggard to throw into the perfect hopscotch square. Forty years later, looking through slatted blinds at cedars bowing to dark clouds over the Columbia River, I have stayed home from work to recover from marketing strategies, ungraded papers and a film about metaphor. I also have the flu. Nauseous, wrapped in a blanket, I sit all morning on the unsteady deck of poetry, warmed and chilled by Mistral's verse. I read for accuracy, looking for an explanation, not a cure.

I'm a college instructor in the state of Washington, and I make as much as the gal who cleans out the restrooms along the interstate highway. I'm not in this for the money. And neither are you. I don't care how current, catchy, and cunning it may be, I cannot call my students customers and what we do as teachers a product. Image and metaphor are important and this is not the Bon Marche. You will not find humanism in the profit margin and consumption for its own sake is not an art or a social science. Pius puritan prayers murmured to the god of wealth will not save our souls. But good literature will. That's what a prayer is, after all.

When Gabriela Mistral died, the president of Chile declared three days of mourning. American market analyists would no doubt find this a colossal waste of time and resources. American schools and colleges are the only American institution I can think of where someone like Mistral can be given time, can be important; the only institution where the pursuit of knowledge, the encouragement of creativity, and critical thinking are still valued for their own sake. This is something to treasure, something worth fighting for, to the end. Otherwise, Americans will have nothing to mourn in death, neither the poet nor the millionaire, only the passing of time.

From a Teacher’s Prayer

Gabriela Mistral

(1889-1957)

Grant that I may be successful in molding one of my pupils into
a perfect poem, and let me leave within her my deepest-felt melody that she may sing for you
when my lips shall sing
no more.

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Michael Allan Moore, CADD/Engineering
Yakima Valley College

The Numbers game, WSCTC Style

"Les Affairs, c’est bien simple, c’est l’argent des autres." Alexander Dumas

(Or if your French is as bad as mine, I like this translation: "Business?
It’s quite simple. It’s other people’s money.")

How’s your enrollment this quarter? FTE’s up or down? How’s the numbers? Excuse the lack of subject/verb agreement in the pithy street vernacular of the last sentence. But we’ve all heard these questions. They define the college experience today, in our state and across the nation.

By now it’s obvious. Everyone involved knows colleges are de facto businesses which exist to make money. So it’s almost natural, even logical, that we call students customers. Sure it’s crass and mercenary. It’s also reality.

Students are customers. How does this change the community college educational experience? Consider the following:

• Grade Inflation, an epidemic long since out of control.
• An ever-widening administration/faculty dichotomy. Dichotomy? Come on, it’s an abyss, an academic Grand Canyon.
• Accountability mania, e.g., accreditation here, there and everywhere. In the process, create mountains of paper no one reads. While we’re at it, let’s PIU check everyone, even if they’ve got the brains and background of a Madame Curie or Einstein.
• Faculty as marketers, selling their wares.
• Bottom line hysteria: Eliminate full-time tenured faculty. Replace them with part-timers. Tear down the Ivory Tower. Save a buck.

Profit motive has permeated every sector of the community college experience. You can’t escape this; it’s everywhere. I received a have-a-good-summer memo from my boss recently, and I did appreciate the cordial message. But the thrust of the letter was that the boss hoped my marketing efforts for my academic program were coming on strong. And I better get plenty of warm bodies into my classroom this fall. If not, my program will be terminated. Have a nice summer.

Let me tell you about one professor here at our college. He used to buy his own advertising to market his academic program. I mean he paid for it out of his own pocket. I admired his will to survive. But I loathed a system that brought this about and allowed it to happen.

* * *

Al Shanker was a good man, a great educator, and also a fine writer. My favorite Shanker essay is "Competing for Customers" (AFT Sept., 1993). He was writing about grade inflation, and how it represented a total erosion of our academic standards. In his essay, he quoted a Wall Street Journal article (June 8, 1993) by Dr. William Maesen:

"Alas, the maverick professor toiling to salvage competent academic standards may find students who vote with their feet and avoid his classes or opt for less demanding teachers. Lower enrollments can readily qualify that teacher for nonrenewal of contract."

Could it be that some of our best teachers, those with standards, are not the most popular with their student-customers? Therefore, those teachers have low enrollments. Therefore, they get fired. Reductio ad absurdum.

The students-are-customers metaphor is severely damaging, if not destroying, the process of education. In its essence that process, going back to the roots of civilization, centers on the teacher-student relationship, the transfer of knowledge and skills, of experience and wisdom, from one person to another. This can and should be, by its very nature, noble and idealistic.

Sure, free-market competition forces us to respond to what our customers want. But should higher education be part of this market? Is education a business?

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George B. Leighton, Ph.D., English
Bellevue Community College

We do a great disservice to everyone when we refer to students as "customers." Schools are not "businesses": If we were, we could dump our outdated technology tomorrow, take a big tax write-off, and buy state-of-the-art equipment and software. Our students are not "customers": If they were, we could make no demands of them whatsoever, for customers are passive receivers of goods, not active participants in a process of discovery and learning.

When we make students customers, we disempower them. We say, in effect, "You have no active role in the educational process. Sit back, and we will do all the work for you. You need do nothing but pay us--you don't even have to come to class. Your check will guarantee you a product: learning. You, the customer, will learn in proportion to the figure on your check. We guarantee it!" This way of thinking devalues all that good educational institutions should stand for--the culture of meaning that makes possible the fully lived, richly examined life--and reduces learning, that most rewarding of all processes, to a mere "product."

To become better citizens, students must take responsibility for their own learning; if they don't, nothing of significance will happen in the development of their civic consciousness during their time at school. When we read about those young people who remain passive and detached or who commit senseless acts of violence without owning the consequences of their actions, we need to ask ourselves what we as educators have done to help them see that they have a role in their own future.

Finally, the notion that students pay us to be their personal servants each quarter fuels the growing lack of civility we are experiencing in our classrooms. If you are dissatisfied with the "product" or "service," why not throw a tantrum and call the "vendor" names? Why not leave the cell phone on in class? After all, you're paying the bill. You're the "customer"--and the customer is always right.

The metaphor of school as business and student as customer is dead wrong. It's exactly the value we shouldn't be "selling" to students. Legislators, administrators, and sleazy educational "marketers" should know better. Let's throw out this metaphor before it destroys that which we cherish most: the cultivation of mind and spirit.

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Crystal Ashley-duVerglas, ABE/ESL
South Puget Sound Community College

When I was in graduate school, I was appalled by the laziness among faculty and how deep the teaching ruts around them had become. Their feet-on-the-table, dog-eared lecture folders and indifference to our wonderful mix of students as a resource was ghastly to me.

Every evening coffee break would find me on my soap box: "We are consumers!" I cried to my classmates, tired from their day jobs and a long commute. "We are learning to be educators, yet our models are boring us to death! If this were a product, you'd return it! If your kids were receiving this, you'd protest!"

"Quiet, Crystal. Just let us get the 'union card,'" they glumly retorted. "All we want is the degree."

My use of the metaphor was lost on them. But it has spurred me to greater excellence ever since.

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Julie Falanga, English
Spokane Community College

In her novel Moo, about campus life at a large mid-western state university, Jane Smiley has the professor of economics, whose primary function is to attract major research contract dollars, consistently refer to the students as "the customers." The appearance of this term, sprinkled throughout his dialogue, is jarring in its matter-of-factness. What makes the term so incongruous is that the rest of the novel is peopled with a variety of professors, students, and even a prize hog, each with his or her own agenda which has nothing to do with profit and loss to the university.

Behind the "customer" epithet, of course, is a way of thinking and a modus operandi that until recently have been confined to the for-profit corporation. But over the last fifteen to twenty years, the corporatization of universities has quietly and inexorably taken over. The new corporate model says that higher education is no longer to be imbued with the spirit of free inquiry and administered by a community of scholars interested in celebrating the life of the mind and, ultimately, in educating the whole person. The new corporate model says that higher education is, instead, a "product" which is "manufactured" at the "factory" (the college or university), which is administered by execucrats, and "sold" (for tuition) to a "customer" (the student) who can then take the product into the marketplace, where it has a negotiable value like any other commodity, irrespective of the actual education that might have taken place.

A close review of this new corporate model exposes several obvious fallacies. First, education in general and higher education in particular are open-ended pursuits in which the outcome cannot be controlled, much less measured with any precision. The degree or diploma that is conferred at the end of a successful program bears no guarantee other than that the graduate attended class often enough and did enough work to receive a passing grade. In all this the most important variable are the students themselves, who must actively participate in the co-creation of this "product."

Second, the corporate view of education-as-product implies a money-back guarantee, something which education by definition cannot offer. The Latin educere, from which "education" is derived, possesses many nuances of meaning. The most obvious sense of "to lead out" is that of developing the human being from the inside out, bringing out the talent and intellectual capacity in the individual which, without education, will remain only latent and undeveloped. The second sense of "to lead out" is to lead the individual out of the comfort zone of mental habit, into the larger world of facts and ideas which have been at most a kind of background hum generated by "the world out there," having nothing to do with "me." Education in these senses equip the individual with the capacity and curiosity to encounter the world and benefit from the meeting. In light of the above, what would be the "product?" What would provide the "guarantee?"

The final fallacy of the corporate approach to education lies in the notion of "student-as-customer." Nevertheless, if the "student-as-customer" model is rigorously applied, the student will still expect some sort of guarantee in return for his or her expenditure of effort. Not only does the student expect a consistent "product," but the equation is often made between the cost and the quality of the "product." In many students’ minds, the "product" boils down to the degree, or the GPA received for the course. The student has "bought" the "product," and needs that "product" to conduct future transactions such as landing the job of his or her dreams. "Product consistency" is often seen as a predictable "A" rolling off the assembly line of a "good school" to match all the other ones the way one buys clothes from a particular mail order catalog noted for its distinctive "look." In exchange for money handed over, the student feels entitled to expect a certain outcome.

In our mass-produced, throwaway culture, the ordinary student buys higher education like a loaf of bread: pricey or cheap, full of flavor and texture or bland and unchallenging, the product must meet expectations. Perhaps only the extraordinary student sees him- or herself as the "product" which must participate in its own creation, and for which there are no guarantees beyond the gamble that a proactive attitude, a voraciously curious and alert mind, and willingness to get down and dirty with the material at hand will ultimately pay off in a life worth living.

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Denise Vaughan, Political Science
North Seattle Community College

The concept of a student as a customer is both accurate and misleading. Students do pay to go to school. In this sense it is clearly an exchange relationship. Students provide the basic capital to run the institution and are much of the monetary foundation for the college. Our primary customer, however, is the state and not the student. Much of the funding for public institutions comes from the public, from legislative expenditures, and from state and federal development grants. This is not to suggest that students are insignificant. On the contrary, students are the critical element of our profession.

This is where the analogy of the student as customer is most salient. The students are why the college exists. Whether the state, the federal government, the taxpayer, or the students themselves pay for their education, the students’ overall benefit is why the university system exists. The student should not be seen as a passive vessel to be filled with four years of empty lectures and mindless assignments. Rather, we are reminded by the student as customer analogy that the student is an integral and active participant in the education process. The student provides as well as receives.

Where the analogy is weakest is the implication of a retail-type relationship between the institution and the student. While the student is a customer of the service the college provides, the college is not a retail establishment, designed to provide a finished product.

What we sell is an interactive experience that demands as much from its customer as from its distributor. As educators our job is not to provide students with a piece of paper that says that they can do a job, but with the tools to adapt to a wide variety of life experiences. Providing the tools for a specific function is not enough. That is not education. An education should provide the student with a base on which to build a career and the basis of their interaction with other citizens.

The portrait of students as customers can also divide the goals of the institution from the goals of the faculty. From an administrative perspective, students are the basis for the funding of the institution and the single most permeable source of funding. The academic goals of the institution, providing the best available academic resources, the broadest education, and a well rounded, student-centered learning environment, however, should not be ignored. As an institution, we do ourselves a disservice by dividing the goals of our academics and our administrators.

The concept of students as customers encourages the larger college environment to see ourselves as providing tools to our students to enable them to compete in a changing world. In this way the analogy of students as customers is highly functional. If, however, we see students as passive recipients of information, as engaged in a simple exchange relationship that involves money for a diploma or a certificate, then our educational prerogatives need to be re-examined.

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Barbara Simpson, Speech
Clark College

I wanted to comment on the idea of "students as customers." For what it is worth, this idea truly bothers me because occasionally I have encountered a student who believes that because he or she "paid" for a course, he or she is entitled, at the very least, to a passing grade. I had a young student a couple of years ago who earned a "D" as a grade . . . . The points she accumulated fell into that category. She felt that because she was in class and participated in discussion and enjoyed the class that she deserved a "C." It did not seem to matter that she failed every quiz, earned a D on the midterm, failed the final, and turned in less than satisfactory papers. When she asked for my recommendation, I suggested that she re-take the course. She balked saying, "I've already paid for this class!"

What students "pay" for is the opportunity to learn, challenge themselves, and be mentored by excellent educators. The idea of students as "customers" sets up institutions of higher learning to be no more than the diploma mills that are occasionally exposed on 60 Minutes. Students should certainly expect that their tuition dollars would provide quality teachers and courses (we already provide checks and balances to see that is the case), and perhaps certain student services. I believe we are already encouraging a high sense of entitlement among students with the substantial grade inflation that is present even on this campus. A "C" is seen by too many students as a punitive or unsatisfactory/unacceptable grade.

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Carolyn P. Bilby, French/Foreign Language
Bellevue Community College

It’s not a complete surprise that students are being called customers. In the early seventies, I was told that teachers were salesmen. I was insulted. Businessmen in those times were associated with a lack of moral values and polluted legacies such as the Love Canal in Upstate New York. I wanted students to discover the joy of learning, to make them life-long learners, to give them something that no one could ever take away.

Unfortunately, our culture has gone to bed with business. Politicians are reading books written by successful businessmen who claim they know how to fix education. Certain college presidents are even calling themselves CEOs. Accountability and productivity have replaced teaching and learning as core values. Calling the student a customer, as well as applying other business terms such as customer service and productivity, cheapen education and often have bizarre ramifications. A colleague and I were told one spring quarter that we were not productive, based on the numbers of students in our classes. We teach Foreign Language. Small classes are best for that type of learning. Unfortunately numbers rule. Students are now asking for refunds for things such as teachers deviating from their proposed calendars of assignments and changes in staffing. They complain that they actually have to attend classes. They are starting to behave like rude customers in a country that caters to customers’ requests. Educational institutions are not Nordstroms. You cannot wear the dress to the prom and then return it, claiming it doesn’t fit. Students need to take responsibility for their learning, to work with faculty and staff in a courteous manner to have their needs met, of course. Yet they should understand that unlike customers, they don’t always know what their needs are.

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Carol Hill, Nursing
Clark College

While I believe we need to look at accessibility of education in terms of meeting students' needs, knowing that most work part-time and many have family responsibilities, I do not believe the "customer" concept is a useful word in terms of the quality of academic work.

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Kathy Bobula, Early Childhood Education
Psychology Clark College

I think this has both good and bad outcomes or implications. Seeing students as customers might drive the college to re-think how we schedule or "package" classes with more innovative time frames (away from the 1 hour per day - 5 days per week for 10 weeks) that suit student life-styles better. I think this would be a positive move.

The down side is that the "customer" approach to curriculum and standards could water down the quality of the education and training that students receive.

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Don Appert, Music
Clark College

Would you like some fries with that? Please !!??? This is not an an appropriate concept IMHO.

IMHO = In my humble opinion

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Roger Baker, Art
Clark College

Students are customers, of course, but I think it more useful to think of society at large as the principle customer. We're concerned more about service to society than to individual students.

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Judy Eng Woo, Ph. D., Business
Bellevue Community College

Viewing the work of education as "business" and students as "customers" was originally part of a perspective to encourage the re-examination of structure, organization, and design of education. Like many "new" models in organizational design and development, the concepts were developed with industrial businesses in mind. Any change is a welcome means to rejuvenate and refresh people and their interest in their work.

Like all innovative and thoughtful models, the farther we move away from the original thought, dilution and incremental slogans take over. You remember how a huge body of management research was consolidated into the slender, top seller "One-Minute Manager" which later evolved to the "One-Minute Parent" (!) and other such mutations. We’ve forgotten (or perhaps some of us never knew) the depth of thought and reflection that built and developed these models.

The business terms are the sound bites of a much larger and older body of research and thought. The notion of "students as customers" is the current, simplistic iteration and . . . outdated. If you review broadly, the literature about the transformation of organizations, thought, and people (e.g., Senge, Wheatley, etc.), the discussions have evolved to terms such as "organic systems and design," "chaos theory," quantum physics, epidemiology, etc., a far cry from the idiom of customers, business, products, deliverables and service.

Still, here we are, stuck with the "business" and "customer" phrasing. We have to get past this period. How?

One way: embrace it! And make it ours! Take the opportunity for a "learning" moment to open thinking about organization design, responsiveness, and transformation. Education and learning ARE about transformation.

Seize the chance! When these phrases pop up, ask the student how he/she is using those words and how do the words fit? As educators and academics, we tend to ponder these ideas with each other but not with students, business persons, or legislators. They really don’t know what educators "do."

Another way: open the discussion, engage, and counter.

One faculty member has used the analogy of physicians or personal exercise trainers. Parts of these "roles" are more accurate than the superficial customer analogy. Physicians or personal trainers diagnose, analyze, and tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear. They plan a course of action, treatment, or exercise in which you have to participate in order to be successful. Because of pre-existing conditions, results are not guaranteed even if you do participate. They challenge you to become or do something different. They tell you it takes time. All of these characteristics are true of learning and education.

Finally, don’t let the semantics create inertia or dissipate the passion for learning and interest in students’ learning. Ultimately we’re all better off for having pursued a discourse of different perspectives.

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Peggy Hartsell, Ph.D., Physics
Clark College

I think as soon as you start looking at the student-as-customer, you will be in deep trouble. This brings up ideas such as "the customer is always right." This is not conducive to learning. I have had unpleasant students demand that I make things very easy for them to get through a physics class because "I pay your salary!!". Student-as-customer is just a step away from student-as-boss.

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Joseph Hull, Physical Science
Seattle Central Community College

Have It Our Way

College: Welcome to McCampus, may I take your order?

Student: I'd like a 3.1 in Chemistry 110, a passing grade in English 103, and 5 credits of foreign language. And hold the afternoon classes, please. I have to work.

College: Good choice, the General Distribution Requirement Big Burp Classic! That will be a 1.3 in Chemistry 101, English 103 in the afternoon, and 5 credits of foreign language. Can I SuperSize that foreign language to 10 credits for you? It's only $499 extra this week only at McCampus!

Student: No way! I can barely afford this place already!

College: And what kind of foreign language will you be having? As you can see, we have the biggest menu of any McCampus in the region!

Student: Whatever! Just give me one that's not cold and dried out.

College: All of our courses are fresh and piping hot at McCampus!

Student: Yeah, right! The last time I was here I picked Introductory Swedish, and it was really poorly prepared, and I got halfway through it; and it made me so ill, I just walked away without finishing it.

College: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that you were not 100% satisfied with your McLanguage Meal. You'll be happy to know that we fired that particular course preparer and have replaced him with special technologies that will keep all our courses fresh and hot at McCampus!

Student: Wait a minute! Is this going to raise the price again?

College: I'm sorry, we WILL have to pass on the costs to our valued customers, but once you've tried our New Improved Enhanced McLanguage, you'll agree that by eliminating the human element and offering them on-line, we've ensured that no matter what your choice, every course will taste exactly the same!

Student: Whatever!! Can I just have my order? I'm running behind here.

College: I'm sorry to keep you waiting! That will be $4,968.53.

Student: Hey, I ordered a 3.1 in Chem 110, not a 1.3 in Chem 101!

College: I'm sorry, but Chem 110 is not part of the Big Burp Classic. But you can make a single substitution for $499 this week only at McCampus!

Student: No way, that's way overpriced!!

College: I'm sorry that you can't afford the Big Burp Classic! Perhaps you could SmallSize your order! Try our 2 Credit Combo for only $499 this week only at McCampus!

Student: Forget it! I'm outta here! I don't know why I keep coming back to this place!

College: Thank you for coming to McCampus, and have a nice day!

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Lotus, Carpentry
Green River Community College

While I appreciate the pitfalls of considering students "customers" in the classroom, I think that to the institution, students are customers. Good customer service should be at the top of our institutional goals.

When classes are canceled, what happens to the students? As far as I know, they are sent over to registration or to the telephone to try to scramble for the few remaining seats in classes they need. They do not have any kind of priority because their classes have been canceled. They are competing for spaces with each other and with late registering students.

I have three students this quarter who are planning to graduate in June, each of whom had one of their required classes canceled. In one case, there was no other section of the class. For the other two students, the other section was full. With the help of other instructors and a dean, my colleague and I were able to get them the classes they need, and they will graduate when they planned.

How many students does this happen to? How many are going to school one extra quarter as a result? This is the kind of bureaucratic delay to graduation that our speaker last week was warning against. If we must cancel classes, we need to serve the students better in the process. No business that treats its customers in this way can expect to continue in business.

Do I like considering the college a business? Well, yes and no. I think it is a useful analogy, but it is only an analogy. Unlike most businesses, a school has missions that are value-laden. Our money comes from taxpayers, who have those missions in mind. If we do not remain true to our missions, there is little reason for us to continue to exist, whether or not we are "making" money. We need to be concerned with the bottom line, but only in relation to our missions.

Another example of potentially poor customer service: a colleague described some of the things her division is doing in order to be more cost-effective. Some of those disturbed me. Should we really be cutting the second year of foreign language instruction? If we must cut one or two languages, by all means keep the third! I understand other divisions are making similar cuts --including mine, and that second-year courses are having a hard time running. This may make sense for the short-term budget, but is it good customer service? Is it even good business? Will students keep coming if all we offer is first-year courses? If they do come, are we honestly meeting our responsibility to educate them?

These are just two examples among many possible areas for discussion. If we want to be a strong, healthy institution, we need to balance the demands of the budget with the needs of our customers, our academic or vocational disciplines, our administration, faculty, and staff, and our greater community. If we divide ourselves into smaller and smaller competing units, we will fail. If we alienate our customers, we will fail. Let's make sure everyone is talking and everyone is represented at the table.

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Andrew Jeffery, Philosophy
Green River Community College

I think Lotus understates the pitfalls of the "student-as-customer" analogy. Let's go for a whole service industry allegory, and if students are to be considered customers, then the taxpayers are our stockholders to whom we are also accountable, if not more so. What are the taxpayers paying for, when we ask for their investment? Our product is the accredited graduate. Unfortunately, current upper management's emphasis on assembly-line efficiency (read FTEs) sacrifices product quality for q