Students are not my customers - Professor

Shocking? Who are the teacher's customers?

His answer is compelling. "Students are my raw material. My customers are the teachers who get them later."

Often teachers are told that the universities product would improve if they thought of the students as their customers.

My rejoinder usually is that graduates are my customers. My job is to hold up the standards so the market value of the degree is protected. Satisfying each individual student usual means giving them a better grade; this is contrary to the interests of graduates. (Yes, we hope all our students will be graduates some day.)

But my friend's point of view has merit; I may adopt it as my own. Too often as teachers we do not consider what students need to be successful in later classes. Taking a nearsighted view of where the student is headed next in the value chain would improve the overall quality of a program of study.

Too often as administrators we think of improving the quality of a program of study in terms of updating program course requirements -- external changes. While we may be aware that the linkages in production process are not working well, we give little thought to how they might be improved -- internal changes.

Now for my friend's idea to have full impact, he needs to be informed about the courses his courses feed. And the instructor's in the upper level courses need to hold his students accountable for knowing the material in the pre-requisite.

Followup: SCSUScholar-lanche! Welcome visitors. For my sequel go here.