By Professor Doom
Last time I started on an
article written by faculty about how viewing students as customers has
affected higher education. For the most part, I agree completely with what the
article has to say, but there’s one line that I feel is quite off:
“We turn universities
into brands…It also justifies potentially corrupt and exploitative athletic
programs in the name of brand recognition and alumni contentment.”
Here
I outright disagree. Why not have a brand, particularly a legitimately earned
brand? Princeton University and M.I.T., for example, are brand names that are
well deserved. Is it the brand that attracts customers in higher education, or
is it (in the case of Princeton) the thought of being in rooms where Einstein
taught or where (in the case of M.I.T.) the most advanced technology in the
world is being developed? A brand per se is not a bad thing, provided it’s not
being exploited ruthlessly.
Places
like Princeton and M.I.T. didn’t get their prestige by running scams, either.
So, yes, I think a brand that is earned from being legitimate is well worth
developing.
I
totally concede athletic programs are, in general, corrupt and exploitative
(the author is being very, very, generous by saying “potentially”). Thing is,
nobody seriously believes that college athletics (particularly football) are
anything but “minor league” athletic programs exploiting people that often make
no claim to even being students. One of these days I’ll hit the highlights of
how bad it is, but there are so many bigger fish to fry in the ocean of
corruption of higher education that it hasn’t been a priority.
Eh,
no reason for me to agree with everything I read, the faculty writing this has
much of right. Maybe I don’t know everything. Maybe. The article continues:
“We focus on growth for
growth’s sake. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to grow academic programs
and colleges and universities. But too many institutions grow for the sake of
growing itself, …Such growth is unsustainable, on a variety of fronts. “
Dead
on again. It’s all about the growth now. Time and again I have more students
filing into my classroom than I have desks to seat them. Time and again I’m
told no pay raise for me as my workload increases. Time and again I learn of
another layer of administrators being placed above me, paid thrice what I get,
and I have no idea what they do or why they’re necessary. Oh yea, I was
supposed to lay off admin for a bit. My bad.
Adjunct: “…I was scared to flunk my students for cheating--I knew that the renewal of
my contract depended on my keeping the customers happy…”
--honest, the reason cheating
is out of control is because administration makes it very clear that
faculty should not catch cheaters.
Anyway,
yeah, I’ve quoted administrator after administrator talk about how improving
education means (for them) improving growth. Education has left the building in
higher education, and it’s clear that, at some point there will be no further
growth. Most institutions will close their doors if they don’t grow—they’ve
mortgaged their future on the premise of insane growth. At almost every
institution I’ve been at, if student enrollment drops slightly (or even reverts
to the levels of just a few years ago), the institution will be in dire, dire,
financial difficulty.
Unsustainable,
indeed.
“The student-as-customer
model, because it is premised upon unsustainable growth and unsecured debt, and
government abandonment of its responsibilities, is the human equivalent of
strip-mining.”
Indeed it is. The line about “government abandonment of its responsibilities” is the sole reference in the article to the complete fraud that is accreditation. Seriously, if accreditation were legitimate, schools would have to be legitimate, and would have to act with integrity (a school cannot be accredited unless it swears to “act with integrity”)…legitimate accreditation would shut down every school that has screwed students in the student loan scheme. That would be most (all?) institutions of higher education.
Student: “I know I’m
always late, but the class before this is on the other side of campus.”
--institutions have grown
so large that now I commonly have students coming 5 to 10 minutes late to
class, every day, because they simply can’t cross campus in the 10 minute break
between classes, and that’s when the weather is perfect. Seriously, there’s a
limit to growth that should be observed.
If
accreditation were legitimate, overnight, the strip-mining of our nation by
institutions of higher education hell-bent on growth whatever the cost to our
youth would stop. That would be a good thing.
Faculty: So the Prez
sends out an email wherein s/he uses the horrifying phrase “improve customer
service.” It’s not even subtle anymore…when I pointed this out to a colleague
s/he states “Oh that’s fine for student affairs, registration and the like, I
have no problem with that, as long as they don‘t expect it in my classroom.” …Do
you REALLY think that the snowflakes will magically change their
behavior/attitudes from “customers” whilst in building X to “responsible adult
learners” in building Y? Did someone from administration come by with some
funky Kool-Aid while I was in class? And when Snowy McSnowflake doesn’t like
the zero I just gave her in building Y, you can bet she will march her little
ass over to building X where she will be a customer, and the customer is always
right. And more importantly, the customer must always be HAPPY. Yeah, a
customer service philosophy on one half of the campus will work great. Idiot. It is like
trying to half flush the toilet...
-- I’ve mentioned what
unhappy customers do before. Why do you think the faculty here is concerned
about unhappy students going to admin?
And
it all started with faculty saying “yeah, maybe we should advertise for more
students, we might help someone get a higher education…”
No comments:
Post a Comment