"If you want to see a bunch of community-college faculty members roll their eyes in unison, just stand up in front of them and utter the words 'customer service,'" so says Rob Jenkins over at the Chronicle of Higher Education. I agree.
In his article, "Your Friendly Neighborhood Instructor," Jenkins addresses this topic in knowing fashion, pointing out the trend among adminstrators to characterize students as "customers" and colleges as "businesses." Jenkins makes a careful distinction:
"After 20 years as a community-college faculty member, I think I can speak for most of my colleagues when I say it's not the "service" part of that thoroughly despised phrase we object to. We all understand that teaching is, at heart, a service profession. That's why most of us got into it in the first place.
What bothers us is the suggestion that our students, while sitting in our classrooms, are customers. Because words have meaning, and that particular word carries some pretty dangerous connotations in an educational context."To read the rest: "Your Friendly Neighborhood Instructor"
