Courtesy of Michael David Leiboff
A recent article in The Chicago Tribune described a continuing debate in business schools over whether their enrollees should be regarded as “customers” rather than as traditional students. Should the students have more say over what they are taught and even how they are judged? What’s the risk of the student-consumer approach in M.B.A. programs? And does the issue reflect broader issues in higher education?
- Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus, George Washington
- Edward A. Snyder, dean, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- David Bejou, dean, Elizabeth City State University School of Business
- Richard Vedder, professor of economics, Ohio University
- Mark C. Taylor, professor of religion, Columbia University
Degrees and the Marketplace
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is president emeritus and professor of public services at the George Washington University. He is also chairman of the Higher Education Practice at Korn Ferry International.
Schools of business have two purposes as far as students are concerned. The first is to educate. The second is to place students in challenging and well-compensated positions after they graduate so they can use their educations to build careers and lives. Along with the quality of the faculty is the effectiveness of the job-placement office. The university is society’s gatekeeper. Students see degrees as tickets of admission to the big show: the marketplace.
Students are investing time and money with a purpose in mind. The school that does not serve that purpose will not survive.
Students are not customers nor are they not customers. They are investing time and money with a purpose in mind. The school that does not serve that purpose will not survive. Students are looking for a quality education, and they want distinguished and accomplished professors on the faculty. But that alone is not sufficient.
The research that is done by faculty enhances the education provided, and expands the discipline and the scholarly foundation of the school. This serves both to add value to the students’ academic experience, and to burnish the reputation of the institution. But professors must teach their material in compelling and informative ways. The capacity for communication is critical.
Student ≠ Customer
Edward A. Snyder is dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Customers pay for services, products and experiences that are packaged and delivered to them. Even in settings where engaged customers interact with companies to influence the value and nature of what they consume, sellers don’t set demanding expectations of customers and partner with them on strategic initiatives.
The best students don’t view themselves as customers, and they shouldn’t be treated as such.
The graduate schools to which future business leaders turn for their development should not, in the words of one of my colleagues, plop students down as “pre-M.B.A. goo” and then orchestrate an experience from which good customer feedback is sought. I’ve said it before: The best students don’t view themselves as customers, and they shouldn’t be treated as such.
Last year a 27-year-old student came to Chicago Booth to make the transition to entrepreneurship (our second most popular concentration). He had already earned two promotions at a Fortune 1000 company and had experienced significant autonomy. He chose Chicago Booth because we gave him control over his curriculum experience, would challenge him to the utmost, and offered extraordinary professional development. Individuals like him are not looking for a customer experience. They are looking for a stretch experience with support.
Broken Promises
David Bejou, the dean of the School of Business and Economics at the Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, is the author of “Treating Students like Customers,” published in BizEd, a publication of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, and the founding editor of the Journal of Relationship Marketing.
Today, many M.B.A. programs define themselves the way railroad companies did some 50 years ago. Theodore Levitt believes that organizations that narrowly define themselves and focus on their products become myopic and fail along with their myopic products.
The debate on the usefulness of M.B.A. degrees has been around for some time; yet only a few have changed. Many have continued the old ways of producing M.B.A.s and made promises to attract new students. Unfortunately for the most part, they broke their promises; they did not engage the students in a holistic approach that would positively impact the individual students, the business world and the global society.
Students were not treated like customers; they were regarded as products and were treated as cash cows. Treatment of students as customers is not about grades or unrealistic expectations; it is about a new paradigm of shared governance.
A Pampered Population
Richard Vedder is director of the Center of College Affordability and Productivity and teaches economics at Ohio University.
Since student evaluations of professors became commonplace 35 years ago, students have played a greater role in campus decision-making. The growth in grade inflation, the near abandonment of Friday classes on many campuses, and the provision of country club-like facilities are three indicators that universities increasingly look at students as customers requiring pampering.
The “student as customer” philosophy has created an underworked and overindulged group of future national leaders.
As tuition costs soar and the pool of college age Americans starts to shrink, this trend will grow. As a consequence, however, universities are endangering their reputation as being rigorously committed to academic excellence.
Surveys show that typically students study, attend class and write papers fewer than 30 hours a week, for only about 30 weeks a year. While the typical American employee works 1,800 hours a year, the typical college student works half that amount on academics.
The “student as customer” philosophy has created an underworked and overindulged group of future national leaders, something that likely will prove costly in the long run.
The Student as Cash Cow
Mark C. Taylor is the chairman of the religion department at Columbia University. His next book, “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities,” will be published in 2010.
The controversy in many business schools swirling around practice of treating education as a product and students as customers would be comic if it did not reflect the widespread failure of people inside and outside colleges and universities to acknowledge the looming financial crisis in higher education.
To deny that higher education is a product and students are customers is to duck the tough questions we should be asking.
It is ludicrous not to acknowledge that colleges and universities are businesses, and higher education is one of the most important domestic and international industries. This industry, which is vital to our national interests, is facing unprecedented financial challenges.
The recent financial meltdown has exposed fatal flaws in a system that is now unraveling. With declining assets (plummeting endowments), growing liabilities (increasing debt), growing fixed costs and declining income, you don’t have to be a business school professor to realize that higher education is on the brink of financial disaster.