NO, STUDENTS ARE NOT CUSTOMERS.

Twenty years ago I suggested "Let's leave aside the quibble that incoming freshmen are 'consumers.' (Employers and fellow citizens are the consumers.)"  Or I've offered variations on "your job is to say no and uphold standards," e.g. "[P]art of being effective is to set those boundaries and stick by them."  Randy "Last Lecture" Pausch suggested an analogy: "professor :: student is as fitness trainer :: weight loser. We, too, have our standards."

I'm always pleased to see someone with a bigger platform than mine extend the argument.  "Keith B. Murray argues that thinking of students as customers gets the professor’s role all wrong."

Arguably, one might think of the people who hire a fitness trainer as clients, and that's where Professor Murray takes up the case.

At my university and in the higher ed media, I frequently hear talk of students being “customers” and, by implication, needing to be thought of and treated as such. While I don’t see a need to butt into every conversation that references students as customers, I nonetheless am struck by the problem of framing students this way. As a marketing professor and a practicing marketing professional, it is quite apparent to me how serious the implications are when college students are wrongly viewed as customers. Let me explain.

There are two types of transactional patrons: customers and clients. Customers are parties who are viewed as needing to be appealed to by vendors who seek to understand what a group of people are interested in and then set out to, ideally, offer a product at an attractive cost (i.e., price) to gain market acceptance and patronage.

The easier and more attractive a transaction can be made by a vendor, the more likely the seller’s success in fostering sales; this typically means offering an attractive product at a lower price, with faster delivery time and/or the convenience of proximity.

Were I to ask the students in one of my classes what they were most interested in getting out of the course, they almost universally would say—perhaps with a smile—"offering an easy way for me to get an A!” And if I were prepared to deliver on such an offer by making the course shorter, easier and less stressful, many students would be exceedingly happy. I would have fulfilled their (misguided) view of my role as a good professor. In effect, I would likely be seen as creating—for them, certainly—a better product at a less demanding price.

That view, though, delivers poor service to taxpayers and fellow citizens, who are the real consumers.  From the perspective of others, perhaps thinking of the students as clients and the professor offering private benefits to the students and spillover benefits to those others is logical.

In the client-centered transaction, there is a very different set of expectations and ground rules that define and then guide what the provider-buyer relationship is like and what’s expected to occur.

In client-type transactions, exchange of time, effort and money by the consumer are predicated on one party’s professional expertise and advice; the buyer party seeks in the long run to benefit from this know-how and counsel. Typical client-based vendor examples include physicians, dentists, financial advisers, tax preparers, accountants, veterinarians, therapists and professors.

The fitness trainer has to push the weight loser, the professor has to push the student.

When students are viewed as clients, the professor is honor-bound and professionally expected to deliver a course that serves their field’s recognized standards and practices, instead of simply catering to the short-term desires of students. The detachment fostered by such considerations should in no way limit approachability or the felt intimacy of the service provision by the professor. Indeed, it is in the mutual interest of both parties in a client-based transaction to offer first-class service when it comes to cordiality, ease of access, affability, personal interest and respect.

That's a point not always been well understood by administrators, particularly as serial administrators have supplanted senior faculty as stewards of their universities.

There are practical and institutional complications with this paradigm. To begin with, professors are all too frequently expected by chairpersons, deans and provosts to get as favorable teaching evaluations as possible from students, who are frequently immature, shortsighted, self-serving and generally naïve as to the purpose of higher education in their professional lives or the role a particular course may have in their future ambitions. An accomplished colleague of mine was recently rated down severely by students for having exams that were too difficult and grading practices that were viewed as too hard. In the end, he paid a price for having high, student-as-client standards in that he was denied a favorable merit-pay increase.

There is a second problem with widespread acceptance of seeing the student as a customer. To the degree that professors fail to understand the immaturity of their client base and seek to cultivate a student-as-customer relationship, the integrity of the institution of which they are a part is potentially compromised and student-as-client interests as course patrons are poorly served. Course content and rigor are likely compromised; the conditions for grade inflation are fostered. Consequently, students are less prepared for life beyond college, and the reputation of the institution is jeopardized by their weak performance on the job market.

Which closes today's sermon, as we have recapitulated wisdom of a score of years ago:  it is fellow citizens and employers who ultimately pass judgement on the work of the university, as manifested in its graduates.