teaching as customer service
Music: The Emeralds: Does It Look Like I'm Here (2010)
In a comment to a recent post about plagiarism, Cris said:
I wonder if students cheat in part because they see themselves as consumers of education. As consumers, their orientation towards education changes. Their aim is not necessarily knowledge and becoming an educated person, but getting a degree that will help them get a better job. If they’re more focused on getting the degree for economic gain, the pursuit of knowledge as a good end in itself becomes less important. Cutting corners by cheating becomes more acceptable. Not all students are like that, but too many are.
I responded that I thought she hit the nail on the head. Mirko Hall, no doubt in response to this conversation, sent me a citation to an article about "student consumerism." I read it (pdf here). Apparently what all of us are noticing now was sensed back in the late 1990s, and some enterprising sociologists set out to get empirical data. After surveying a rather large number of sociology majors, they concluded with what most of us who teach have known anecdotally for a decade: The consumer model is taking over higher education. Many students believe that because tuition is paid, they deserve an expected grade. This 2002 essay reports that students also expect to be entertained, and that evaluation measures like "the teacher showed an interest in student progress" only serves to cue a consumerist mentality.
Previously on RoseChron we've discussed the ever-more-pronounced sense of entitlement among students as having something to do with the dominant child-rearing philosophy in the 1990s: every kid gets a trophy. And that's certainly part of the issue. But what this 2002 report also underscores (albeit indirectly) is that academic institutions, in responding to the market, are a part of the problem: in their pursuit of goods external to the practice it houses, educational institutions compromise the goods internal to the practice (e.g., learning). Educators are encouraged to "sing and dance" and to grade more loosely. As someone who sings and dances a lot---and as one of the departments worst infaltors---I haven't really thought of my "teaching style" as a response, however unconsciously, to the encroaching customer service model. I pattern lectures like a television program, with periodic "commercial breaks" (like a goofy YouTube video), to keep my students' interest. I started doing this after seeing a persuasive presentation by Katherine Hayles on the emergent learning styles of young people (e.g., the straight forward lecture is not going to work). But now I'm starting to worry that "meeting students where they are at" may eventually be the drive-thru window.
Recently, my university administration has been thinking about adding scores of online courses to raise funds. The idea is that the university would like to grow, however, it's land-locked and we cannot accommodate any more students. The thought, apparently, is to allow students a number of online course options to increase tuition dollars. This is a good example of how the institutions housing the practice of education are part of the problem: the bottom line drives the initiative, not the mission. As a teacher, how am I supposed to combat a customer service mentality---"I deserve an A because I pay your salary!"---when, for example, half of my students are taking their courses online? How do I fight customer service thinking when every evaluation I give at the end of each course reads like a comment card from Wendy's? That I have a "chain of command for complaints" statement on my syllabus is telling: when a student is angry that I didn't let her take a quiz late, she doesn't come to me about it, she doesn't go to my chair. She goes straight to the dean! "I'm talking to your manager!"
We already know, in general, that online courses are not as effective as meat-space courses. I'm not saying there are not valuable courses taught online; I am saying that, in general, they are inferior to real space courses. One or two or even three online courses in a four-year degree seems to me to be ok, perhaps a valuable experience because of the variety and different ways of thinking online courses encourage. But if my university goes too far down the online road, I fear we'll have become McAus-Vegas U. Easy courses and good times! Worthless degree!