So...I sat through the PowerPoint presentation plus verbal presentation over "collegiality."
It was worse than useless. It was useless, was having technical problems that kept kicking people out, and started from a false premise (that students are the customer, and professors are in a customer service business).
Students are not customers. They are product.* We who stand in front of a classroom, either physical or digital, are not in the customer service business. We professors are in the business of improving the product.
We are not supposed to make the "customer" happy. We are supposed to offer good value--knowledge--for a set cost.
If anyone needs to be trained in customer service on campus it's the student services department, the campus activities board, the financial aid department, and, perhaps, administration.
Leave me the fuck alone. I have papers to grade.
*Unless they're paying for their own education out of pocket--a rare occurence, considering that most college is paid for by government grants and loans, scholarships, or parents. The ones paying are the customers. Most students don't pay for their own education. Therefore, most students aren't customers, and all are product.
59 minutes ago
I'd actually argue the real "customers," if we have to have them in the academic model, is society or the student's future employer.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, in my department, all my colleagues are very cognizant of that: if the students we unleash on the world are ill-prepared, it makes US look bad. Unfortunately some departments have swallowed the "let's make it fun and easy and keep the kids happy so we get high evaluations" model.
I had to sit through a couple days of that kind of crap at the beginning of the year. Interestingly enough, there were major technical difficulties in the programs I was in too. Maybe God is trying to tell the presenters to let the profs go back to work?
That's a damn good point. I'm not so lucky in my dept...one of my colleagues gives As to papers I would give a C, at best, to.
DeleteI have three more of these time- and university money-wasters to attend.