mortiz0010

A reader from  Point   Loma   Nazarene   University sent me an email that started this piece on school costs, expectations, retention rates and customer service. He wrote: "I’ve enjoyed reading your blog and am currently reading your book,  The Power of Retention . I have a question about the difference in responses of students in private versus public colleges and universities. Have you found that students who leave private universities do not leave for poor service as frequently as they do in public ones? Our retention rate is much higher than the ones in your examples." No I don’t. In fact, customer service issues are a stronger reason for leaving a private college since there is usually more investment at stake. To start with, the higher cost of a private college or university over a publicly-affiliated college brings with it higher service return demands. There is an interesting correlation situation created by cost in reference to service provided. In all ...

I was eating lunch on a college campus the other day and watched as four students came and all sat down to lunch together at a table.  Now, this was not a monastic college but not one of them said anything to another throughout their sitting together. Nor did they seem to acknowledge one another’s presence though it was clear they had chosen to sit together. They were all too busy looking down at their smart phones to engage one another. It was amazing to see how they could scroll through the phone and even text with one hand while the other hand lifted food and miraculously found a mouthy to place it in.  I was saddened by the lack of communication with one another. It was equally frustrating to realize that students seem to be more engaged in their phones than anything else on campus. But then it came to me. Why not use the phone as a college service device? Why not realize and accept that the phone has become more important to most students than for example the computer or ...

I keep receiving reports that students seem more irritated,less patient, quicker to anger and less tolerant these days. That makes it tougher to work with them and help them. Though we may all realize that a student’s anger and even insults are not personal, they sure feel it. This is especially so since students keep pointedly using that second person pronoun “you” as if it were a weapon since they believe you are the school when they speak or even may curse at you. They see you as the representative of that cold, impersonal money-grubbing abstract “the college” that has caused some disaster in their otherwise imperfect life. They have not learned how to separate the particulars from the universal. And when they are talking to you, you are a true representative of the college. As such, you equal the entire collection of bricks, mortar, people, rules and offices that is the university. So, at that moment, in that encounter, the student believes you are responsible for any wrong done;...

Over the past two years, we have been interviewing and speaking with students students to listen and better understand what motivates them to make their decisions to choose a school or leave it. There is much we learned from the 818 students we interviewed and spoke with. One of the things we came to understand is that there is a hierarchy of student need that guides a great deal of their decision-making in choosing a school, then deciding to stay or leave. This hierarchy takes the form of five questions they consider when looking at a college or consider leaving one. Can I get in? Can I afford it? Can I graduate? Can I get a job? (or get into a good grad school) Will I enjoy it? In some ways the questions parallel the organization of  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need . They proceed from Primary Concerns, basic issues of necessity and immediacy, to practical considerations of Return On Investment to finally a Personal consideration.  But, the question of a satisfying experienc...