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November 02, 2009 4:14 PM
Making Higher Ed More Consumer-Focused
The Center for American Progress has up a good white paper (when I first posted this I incorrectly referred to it as a column) about one of the foundational shortcomings in the United States’ higher education system:
Students make customer choices based on available information, interests, abilities and life circumstances that will mostly determine whether they succeed in obtaining an education with a meaningful credential. The problem is our higher education marketplace today does not account for this customer focus that is so important to success. In large measure, this is because education policies that guide this marketplace are largely crafted by the dominant voices in higher education—colleges and universities with the resources to sway elected officials. Students as customers have no voice in this policy conversation.
To develop a “student-centric focus for higher education,” CAP has a suggestion:
The Department of Education should… [form] a quasi-independent, Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education. This new office should:
* Produce a College Customer Bill of Rights that enforces truth in advertising regarding: academic quality, student services and support and flexibility and convenience.
* Ensure that mandated federal data gathering, assembly, analysis and presentation are conducted in ways that empowers students with usable customer information.
* Be an ombudsman for students with state officials and regional accrediting agencies to integrate and publish “truth-in-education” customer data and direct student customers to the appropriate officials when they have grievances with their education provider.
Bringing a customer focus to higher education would empower students as customers and, especially for low-income students, provide information and support to make postsecondary education a viable option amid their work and life responsibilities. Customer focus can help build a student-centric higher education system that delivers quality, flexible learning experiences that lead to educational credentials for personal growth and career success.
It would certainly be useful for college students—particularly those not on a “traditional” four-years-and-done path—to have an institution like this advocating on their behalf.
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Prof. U on November 03, 2009 4:39 AM:
Keep in mind that while students are customers when it comes to picking a college, there are another set of consumers whose interests need to be considered. Employers. For colleges and universities, students are their product and future employers of those students are their customers. Schools are always balancing between obligations to the students and to those who will some day hire those students who get their degrees.
RMcD on November 03, 2009 11:22 AM:
The problem is that students, as "consumers," want primarily to buy a degree, not get an education. They want less work, lower standards, cheaper prices, and unlimited convenience--usually at the cost of actually learning something. They also want all this ease to magically result in them getting the perfect job while earning them status and respect. Fortunately, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The job of university faculties is to make sure that students do learn something. Which means students are getting something they did not already know, and hence could not have been the basis of a classic consumer choice.
If you think that today's universities are not already driven by consumer values, you are deeply confused. Choice is everywhere: of colleges, majors, concentrations, courses, delivery methods (on-line, telecourse), etc. But the market cannot determine every aspect of higher ed, and the dogmatic insistence that it should is a pernicious threat to academic quality. It is one more justification for empowering the corporate mentality of upper administration over the academic concerns of faculty. There was a time when liberals recognized that the marketplace was not a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem, a time when education was valued for its own sake rather than strict market imperative. Judging from WaMo's recent output on higher ed, that time has passed.