Students as Customers

Professors bristle at the ever-growing call to treat students in higher education as "customers" or "clients," and for good reason. As I've written about elsewhere, the need to compare students to anything is strange. Why do we need an analogy? And if this is the appropriate analogy, what are the implications for education?

Obviously, professors don't like this comparison (or change in labels) because it implies that students are paying for grades or paying to be treated well. It suggests that we are here to "serve" students in obsequious fashion and to treat education like a "product," reducing the classroom experience to a transaction.

More than anything, perhaps, professors think of the old adage that "the customer is always right," and wonder if this slippage of terminology will lead to a further erosion of authority and standards. If a student demands a grade change, does that mean the customer gets what they want?

As anybody who has ever worked in retail or the service industry will tell you, though, the customer isn't always right. Often the customer is wrong. While efforts may be made to make a customer happy, sometimes the customer is incorrect about the facts or misguided in what they think they deserve, and a worker may endanger the business or waste valuable time or resources by bending to the customer's wishes.

A drunk customer who wants more to drink but has been cut off is not "right" in demanding more, and the bartender would be unwise to serve him. A customer who demands an employee break company rules or ethical standards is not right. A customer who demands something for free, when it isn't really warranted, is really just engaging in a kind of theft by acquiescence. That's not fair, ethical, or "right."

Beneath consideration would be the customer who becomes rude, loud, or even verbally abuses a waitress or salesperson just because they believe they're allowed to do this as the customer. This is a customer who is not worth a business's time, no matter how much an employee might be tempted to try to do whatever he or she can to calm him down.

Students should be treated like customers in certain contexts, e.g., when registering and paying for classes, when eating at the cafeteria, or when buying books at the campus bookstore. Professors and everyone else at the college have a duty to be polite and professional with students, and to treat them with compassion and human understanding, but that's not the same as treating them like customers. There's no need for a new model or analogy, although we can all think about how to improve our day-to-day behavior and interactions with students.