Guest Post – Christoph Knoess
The NY Times recently ran an article discussing whether M.B.A. students are scholars in the traditional sense or customers buying a service. The participants in the discussion are all highly accomplished and credible administrators, professors and policy advocates and most of what they say applies to higher education in general and is not specific to Business Schools. You find that very interesting article here.
The crux of the initial question of course is that the quality of any education depends equally on the ability and willingness of the instructor to teach as it does on the ability and willingness of the student to learn. The notions of “vendor” and “customer” do not reflect that co-dependence. And the experts weighing in on the NY Times article elucidate that problem from different perspectives.
But I feel there is a bigger question behind the “student-as-a-customer” problem that is missing from the NYT discussion, but that is very important to the discussion on how to fix what is wrong with education in the U.S. : Is education a privilege of those that have the smarts, means and motivation to acquire it or is it a right that society owes to every citizen?
The U.S. has an unequivocal answer to that question as far as primary and secondary education are concerned: both are a right and entitlement of every child. For post-secondary education the answer is a lot less clear and depends on whom you ask; some will describe it as a right and some as a privilege.
Other developed and developing countries – including some that outperform the U.S. in educational attainment – have come to different answers: while primary education universally is seen as a right, many countries take a more nuanced approach towards secondary education. They offer different formats of secondary education (with different emphasis on vocational and academic skills), and while access to some form of secondary education is everyone’s right, access to the most desirable forms (i.e., the ones that pave a path to the most desirable post-secondary institutions) is a privilege that must be earned through academic performance. As an example, France is currently debating the fairness of its system to find the most deserving students to attend its grandes ecoles.
The U.S. approach to secondary education is rarely questioned in the discussion on how to fix education, even though it is quite different from that of most other countries, in that it provides just a single format for all students irrespective of their aptitude and interests (but accepts wide diversity in terms of standards and outcomes) and it positions success in that format as a “deliverable” our school districts owe to every one of their students (that they are expected to deliver irrespective of cost considerations).
Post-secondary education is left to deal with the consequences of this approach. To name just a few:
- it undermines the notion that education is the result of a joint effort of teacher and student
- it turns education into a “service” that students buy (with vouchers, loans and parents’ funds) and the results of which depend only on the effort of the teacher, i.e., it deemphasizes the role of the student in the process
- it reduces academic merit to performance on a one-off standardized test that is administered in 11th grade and is largely disconnected from class-room learning
- it produces undergraduate students that never learned how to play an active role in their education
- it breeds the “students-as-a-customer” who pick post-secondary institutions based on their amenities.
These consequences are not a problem for the vocational forms of post-secondary education: for-profit schools successfully fulfill the vocational educational needs and “customer expectations” of their students. Their value proposition of “we-deliver-the-skills-needed-for-a-bigger-paycheck-for-a-fee” is compelling to a growing segment of students and can be delivered at a profit.
But the “student-as-a-customer” attitude has created a problem for traditional higher education. Playing to that attitude has led institutions to compete on the luxury of their dorms and athletic facilities rather than the uniqueness of their mission. It has reduced the differences between institutions and has created a bland sameness characterized by unnecessary costs. It has replaced academic criteria for college choice with non-academic ones. Customer satisfaction concerns have largely replaced mission mandates. Last, but not least, it has created a costly way of operating that might not be sustainable in the future.
I believe that higher education did not invent, but merely accepted the notion of the “student-as-a-customer”. And I realize that once a four year education has become almost as expensive as a single family home, it is very difficult for institutions to resist the “I-am-a-customer” attitude of their students.
But I also believe that traditional higher education has to try much harder to resist that notion, because I have little confidence that traditional institutions can compete with for-profit schools in the delivery of customer value, or with community colleges in the selling of academic credits that price-sensitive students combine to a degree.
Christoph Knoess is a member of Linked In’s “Higher Education Management Group” and CEO of Engaged Minds Inc.
