mortiz0010

 Many people in academia get upset when students are referred to as customers. The concept seems to irk faculty in particular. Something about the customer and service provider relationship in a higher education context just seems wrong. It seems to me that the problem comes out of some misunderstanding and misperception. This is especially so as a result of misunderstanding of the line “the customer is always right”. Faculty and others in colleges seem to believe this statement means they should give the students what they want such as high grades and praise when they are not due. This is incorrect and a rather naïve concept if one just gives it a bit of thought especially in the academic and most professional service environments such as medicine.  The phrase is attributed to Caesar Ritz who applied it to a hotel environment to exhort his staff to take the hotel’s clients seriously with courtesy and tact. He was upset that his staff were treating the guests as if they were ...

   There are three major returns on investment that students want from a college . They are:   1.       Financial return on investment 2.       Emotional return on investment and 3.       Affective return on investment. The phrase return on investment makes these sound like a rational calculation that students perform to decide if they are indeed receiving the ROI they expect and want. That is not so. These are not the business calculations that a company might make to determine if an investment is worthwhile to make. Business calculations take into account outlay of funds that will either realize a profit, a return, of not. The calculations students make are instead subjective investments, feelings that are made by students in schools. The role of emotions in retention is an extremely important one that is not taken into account enough. Students make their initial decisions to attend a college or ...

customer service, academic customer service, retention,customer service in college Faculty tell me at every workshop or presentation I make on academic customer service that one statement students make really frosts them. They hate it when students tell them “I pay your salary.” Why it upsets them so much I am not completely sure since it is so very true. Students do pay for faculty and everyone’s salary at a college or university. If there were no students paying tuition and being counted for state or municipal financial support there would be no revenue to pay any salaries. There would be no college to work in so why should the reality of the customers paying salaries be so irritating? The student is indeed the customer of the university or college. The revenue and the financial support they bring are central to a college’s existence. They fit the definition of a customer too. Someone who exchanges money or something of value for goods and/or services. Paychecks might as well be sig...

They are not coming to us to buy a shirt, or skirt or an IPhone or any retail goods or anything material at all. They are after an intangible. Students come to school to obtain education, knowledge, improvement and growth. And most importantly, the certification they will need to get to the job or next step in their lives. They are incomplete individuals who are intellectually weak or ill in a sense. They go to school and classes to learn how to make themselves stronger and sounder. They come to higher education realizing they are incomplete and intellectually weak beings that have to learn how to strengthen mind and body to be able to run and compete in the marathon of career and adult life. As if higher education were a large clinic filled with specialists who will help them find out what is wrong with them. Then provide them answers, remedies and prescriptions that will make them better and stronger. As if faculty were intellectual physicians. Actually, students and faculty/staff of...