1. What is the role of customer service in higher education? To what degree should faculty be responsible for providing customer service in their teaching?
Even if we embrace the problematic idea that students are customers, higher education cannot, and should not, embrace the business platitude that the customer is always right. The heart of the teacher-student relationship is, in my opinion, honest evaluation. Teachers promise to be fair and transparent in their evaluation; students promise to carry out the work that is asked of them. This attitude does not, and should not, exist in business. Businesses do not evaluate their customers; they serve them, hence the idea of customer service. The notion of service in higher education is limited …show more content…
Someone who pays $100 for a new muffler is entitled to whatever kind of muffler he or she wants; someone who pays $25,000 in tuition is not entitled to a particular grade, but only to (a) an honest evaluation and (b) the teacher’s dedication to his or her success. To me, customer service in higher education is provided when teachers are fair, transparent, proactive in assisting students, and dedicated to ensuring the improvement in and out of the classroom. If that is what is meant by customer service in education, then I heartily support it. However, I do not accept the notion that students, by virtue of paying tuition, are entitled to specific evaluation outcomes; what they are entitled to, in terms of service, is a specific evaluation process, one in which they are helped and …show more content…
If instructors are treated as interchangeable units of production, or as a so-called ‘cost center,’ it is inevitable that the quality of instruction will suffer, with short- and long-term adverse consequences for all of society. I think that a healthier balance can be sought, one in which instructors have increased job security and institutional respect at the same time as they are asked to be contributors to the top and bottom lines of the institutions that they are serving. Higher education stands between the market and the public sector; it has responsibilities to both. I think that we have been experiencing a generation-long swing towards privatization that, at some point, must return to a mature and long-term consideration of the social role of colleges and universities. Creating scenarios in which both adjunct and permanent faculty are more broadly supported can only improve the academy’s ability to keep the quality of instruction high, thus serving both the private and public trust in an improved
Even if we embrace the problematic idea that students are customers, higher education cannot, and should not, embrace the business platitude that the customer is always right. The heart of the teacher-student relationship is, in my opinion, honest evaluation. Teachers promise to be fair and transparent in their evaluation; students promise to carry out the work that is asked of them. This attitude does not, and should not, exist in business. Businesses do not evaluate their customers; they serve them, hence the idea of customer service. The notion of service in higher education is limited …show more content…
Someone who pays $100 for a new muffler is entitled to whatever kind of muffler he or she wants; someone who pays $25,000 in tuition is not entitled to a particular grade, but only to (a) an honest evaluation and (b) the teacher’s dedication to his or her success. To me, customer service in higher education is provided when teachers are fair, transparent, proactive in assisting students, and dedicated to ensuring the improvement in and out of the classroom. If that is what is meant by customer service in education, then I heartily support it. However, I do not accept the notion that students, by virtue of paying tuition, are entitled to specific evaluation outcomes; what they are entitled to, in terms of service, is a specific evaluation process, one in which they are helped and …show more content…
If instructors are treated as interchangeable units of production, or as a so-called ‘cost center,’ it is inevitable that the quality of instruction will suffer, with short- and long-term adverse consequences for all of society. I think that a healthier balance can be sought, one in which instructors have increased job security and institutional respect at the same time as they are asked to be contributors to the top and bottom lines of the institutions that they are serving. Higher education stands between the market and the public sector; it has responsibilities to both. I think that we have been experiencing a generation-long swing towards privatization that, at some point, must return to a mature and long-term consideration of the social role of colleges and universities. Creating scenarios in which both adjunct and permanent faculty are more broadly supported can only improve the academy’s ability to keep the quality of instruction high, thus serving both the private and public trust in an improved