Spin-off "The student as a paying customer"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent, I am the paying customer. I expect high quality teachers (which rarely happens) and I expect my kid to behave in a proper manner, including addressing professors properly. As they payer, I can cut funding at any time should neither live up to expectations.

No. I'm sorry you can't wrap your limited mind around the fact that colleges and universities are not retail stores.

Universities and colleges are providing a service. So, the student is a client or customer or what ever you want to call them. They are paying for it. Its not free, like public school and even then we pay for it through our taxes.

I don’t know of any store where you apply for admission, do you?

Costco

You don’t apply to shop at Costco. You buy a Costco membership.

That's just semantics. To get a Costco membership you must fill out a form and pay some money - about as much as you would pay to apply at most colleges, in fact - or you're not getting in. The admission rate is around 100% if you apply, but you must apply for a membership to shop there (I hear there are some workarounds, but then aren't there with college applications too?) Once awarded, your membership can be revoked for unethical or illegal behavior such as shoplifting. It's an analogy that works well for the question posed by the PP upthread, though I don't subscribe to the notion that college students are like customers. I believe that viewing each student as a commission is incompatible with maintaining institutional autonomy and academic integrity. I think a much better analogy is an exclusive gym membership. You apply and pay lots of money, you take Soul Cycle, you hire personal trainers, but fitness is still not a product you can buy, it requires work. The gym simply provides resources you can use to reach your fitness goals, and they are not responsible if you don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think Costco has turned anyone down because they had already filled all their slots. If you have the fee, it's sort of a done deal.

That's not the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent, I am the paying customer. I expect high quality teachers (which rarely happens) and I expect my kid to behave in a proper manner, including addressing professors properly. As they payer, I can cut funding at any time should neither live up to expectations.

No. I'm sorry you can't wrap your limited mind around the fact that colleges and universities are not retail stores.

Ha! Just wait until OP throws a fit because she wants her money back. Four years of tuition and jr still hasn’t graduated? OP will be one irate customer...

Or how about graduated, but can’t get a job?

[Anonymous]

I don't disagree that most of the money doesn't go to salaries (although people forget the lifelong and very generous pensions in their salary calculations).

But that also doesn't mean that professors get to pretend that students aren't taking on life-harming debt levels to be in their classrooms.

[Anonymous]

And undergrad students are still students, not peers. If you don't like it, you can walk.

Maybe you'd like Sam's Club policies better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't disagree that most of the money doesn't go to salaries (although people forget the lifelong and very generous pensions in their salary calculations).

But that also doesn't mean that professors get to pretend that students aren't taking on life-harming debt levels to be in their classrooms.

What are you talking about with “pensions?” Cops get pensions. People in higher ed have to invest in retirement plans like everyone else if they ever want to retire.

[Anonymous]

"But that also doesn't mean that professors get to pretend that students aren't taking on life-harming debt levels to be in their classrooms."

If a student is taking on life-harming debt, they have a beef with their HS councilor and their parents, not their professors.

There is NEVER a good reason to take on that much debt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This attitude seems to cut right to the heart of a very entitled generation.
The student is a paying customer for dorms and food, yes! The actual education, is NOT a commodity. "I paid 3k for this chemistry class and I still got a D, I should pass because I paid". I am former faulty, and I got so fed up with kids who expected to be spoon fed the answers and information, and won't open their BOOKS . Student: "You didn't tell me this would be on the exam." Me: "Is it in the assigned textbook? Is it in the syllabus?" Back in MY day, I read the entire assigned text! Imagine that! And if I didn't understand the assigned text, I read another text covering the same material. I went to lectures, and talked to TAs as needed.
I know some people may say "Why go to college if I can just read the book?" The value added is from faculty helping you understand concepts, or correlate the material to other disciplines, from having peers to spark discussions.
Sheesh

Sorry, professor. Long gone are the days where a year of college could be paid with some summer job. Undergrad is $28,000-78,000 per year. You Ivory Tower bureaucrats are living high on the hog in your bubble, most of you contribute literally nothing to society and just exist to exploit families. That's just the truth. College has become a very expensive racket.

Not true. Tenure-track professors in my field start off making 60-80K while being expected to publish prolifically and bring extramural funding to the university from NIH and elsewhere. Maybe it’s a racket for some higher-ups, but not for most of your kid’s professors.

That doesn't count the lifetime benefits most tenured professors get, and tenured salaries are much higher than 60-80k. It is a racket.

Then don't send your kid. If you're claiming that professors are "complicit," then students and parents are as well. Just opt out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you OP!

Can I tell you the mindset that I can commiserate with though?

Thinking back to my college days (or high school)..
As a busy student who’s trying to fulfill good grades and all the assignments I want to do...

I’ve been *burned* by some professors assigning material or work that we didn’t end up needing to care about. In other words, the professor gives two lengthy reading materials. I read them both, with one taking a *significant* amount of time. I sacrificed and read it even though it was long. Next class, there’s a quiz on the materials.... and the long material is not covered in the quiz. Burn.

1) if the prof attitude is that they don’t care, I should what to read it anyway... that is not right. Go ahead and quiz me on it. Give me 2 points of credit, but don’t ask me to just LOVE to read extra assignments for the fun of it. That’s my choice to make. In fact, because you wasted my time, I did not have time to read extra material that I find enlightening and fun. It is the equivalent of telling a veterinarian or other job, they should give free care because they love the animals, or because they’re passionate for marketing or whatever.

No I do not have free time to waste on material you’re never going to ask about.

2) if you’re going to assign stuff, quiz it all for comprehension or a basic quiz to prove we actually read it.

Again, I will read whatever you assign but when you burn me once, I’m going to want to know “if this material will be on the test.”

-signed, someone who never had the courage to ask that question. But SO happy whenever another student did.

Dear god, I feel sorry for you.
Here's a life tip--do NOT see everything worthwhile in life as an economic transaction. If you do, you are bound to be an even more shallow and superficial person than you already are. You don't read important literature because you're going to be quizzed on it. You read it because it will give you some insight into humanity.

Please don’t feel sorry for me. I truly do not have the outlook you’re suggesting.
Do you know how much English majors read? For fun and for assignments? (I was an English major but switched).

No, it is not ok to assign reading that wont be asked about in some manner. Yes, sometimes it’s about making connections. However, with that ‘free’ time, I could have been earning from my part-time job; figuring out my depression, specifically during my third semester; sleeping, or getting other important work for the class completed.

Promise, I am the last one to be one of those kids—I would have never asked those questions. I always guessed that material would be discussed in the next lecture, or else why would they assign it?
Turns out, yes, sometimes they give you 200 pages to read and they don’t ask you about it. Hence, in the future, one of the students will ask that question.

[Anonymous]

I'm not unsympathetic to the professors, who have no control over what universities charge people.

But.

For the people defending them, you must admit that tuition and fees have gotten out of hand, yes? It's unrealistic to expect that parents and students will demand nothing back for the enormous amount of money they hand over.

It's only going to get worse.

Professors who don't like how things are going should get out now while they can still find another job in a robust economy.

You don't really think things are going to get any better when they're asking, 80k, 90k, 100k a year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you OP!

Can I tell you the mindset that I can commiserate with though?

Thinking back to my college days (or high school)..
As a busy student who’s trying to fulfill good grades and all the assignments I want to do...

I’ve been *burned* by some professors assigning material or work that we didn’t end up needing to care about. In other words, the professor gives two lengthy reading materials. I read them both, with one taking a *significant* amount of time. I sacrificed and read it even though it was long. Next class, there’s a quiz on the materials.... and the long material is not covered in the quiz. Burn.

1) if the prof attitude is that they don’t care, I should what to read it anyway... that is not right. Go ahead and quiz me on it. Give me 2 points of credit, but don’t ask me to just LOVE to read extra assignments for the fun of it. That’s my choice to make. In fact, because you wasted my time, I did not have time to read extra material that I find enlightening and fun. It is the equivalent of telling a veterinarian or other job, they should give free care because they love the animals, or because they’re passionate for marketing or whatever.

No I do not have free time to waste on material you’re never going to ask about.

2) if you’re going to assign stuff, quiz it all for comprehension or a basic quiz to prove we actually read it.

Again, I will read whatever you assign but when you burn me once, I’m going to want to know “if this material will be on the test.”

-signed, someone who never had the courage to ask that question. But SO happy whenever another student did.

Dear god, I feel sorry for you.
Here's a life tip--do NOT see everything worthwhile in life as an economic transaction. If you do, you are bound to be an even more shallow and superficial person than you already are. You don't read important literature because you're going to be quizzed on it. You read it because it will give you some insight into humanity.

Please don’t feel sorry for me. I truly do not have the outlook you’re suggesting.
Do you know how much English majors read? For fun and for assignments? (I was an English major but switched).

No, it is not ok to assign reading that wont be asked about in some manner. Yes, sometimes it’s about making connections. However, with that ‘free’ time, I could have been earning from my part-time job; figuring out my depression, specifically during my third semester; sleeping, or getting other important work for the class completed.

Promise, I am the last one to be one of those kids—I would have never asked those questions. I always guessed that material would be discussed in the next lecture, or else why would they assign it?
Turns out, yes, sometimes they give you 200 pages to read and they don’t ask you about it. Hence, in the future, one of the students will ask that question.

Yes, I know this because I have an MA in English literature.

You are an idiot. I see why you switched majors. Also, your are a terrible writer: if I were you, I would stop telling people you had been an English major. It makes you look incredibly stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not unsympathetic to the professors, who have no control over what universities charge people.

But.

For the people defending them, you must admit that tuition and fees have gotten out of hand, yes? It's unrealistic to expect that parents and students will demand nothing back for the enormous amount of money they hand over.

It's only going to get worse.

Professors who don't like how things are going should get out now while they can still find another job in a robust economy.

You don't really think things are going to get any better when they're asking, 80k, 90k, 100k a year?

So vote with your dollars. Don't send your kid to a high-profile research university. Send them to a SLAC or a low-cost state school. Actually, this will have no impact - we get enough wealthy foreign student who are happy to pay full freight for the privilege of studying at a U.S. research institution, so things will not change (except perhaps the level of helicopter parenting and entitlement - the foreign students are much better in this respect). And go ahead and complain to the university about my teaching efforts - it will give me and my Dean something to laugh over after he congratulates me for my latest big research grant. Research universities are not about teaching - they are about the creation of new knowledge through research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is amazing that you all here think that the $45-50k tuition / year you are paying goes to teaching at an elite school.

This is not the case.

I work as a science prof at a school that is highly ranked (top 25) and charges one of the highest tuitions in the country.

I can tell you how your tuition is spent. First, 60% is skimmed off for "student life" -- deans who plan extracurriculars, famous speakers, gyms, offices of
students with disabilities, disciplinary committees, etc.

Then 30% goes to the school you are in for things like classroom maintenance (keeping the buildings' lights on, security, keeping buildings built, paying bureaucrats' salaries.

Then the last 10% (about $5k / student) goes to all of the instruction. Not just professors' salaries, but also teaching assistant salaries, instructional materials, planning time, laboratory equipment and supplies, admin support for students (e.g. academic coordinators, etc), curriculum planning and national certification, grading, etc.

So if you are not paying much more than you were for that chemistry class. You are paying for the 90% above. Your chemistry prof is either an adjunct who is paid $5k/term to teach 100 students (or possibly even a student who is paid $2k to teach the course) or it is a prof who technically gets paid to teach but really only has tenure because they get research grants and are focused on that, not teaching. If you get lucky you might get an older prof who is past the grant getting stage and might actually have time to think about teaching.

You are really paying for the privilege of hanging out with the other "elite" students who were admitted. I love the students and they are amazing, but my advice as a prof at one of these schools is state school, except perhaps for HYP who will pay your whole way if you are not rich enough to afford it.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think Costco has turned anyone down because they had already filled all their slots. If you have the fee, it's sort of a done deal.

That's not the point.

Yes, it was exactly the point. Costco probably turns people away who cannot pay. There are plenty of colleges who take the majority of the kids who apply. Where do you think the rest of the kids go who aren't in the top 30% go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not unsympathetic to the professors, who have no control over what universities charge people.

But.

For the people defending them, you must admit that tuition and fees have gotten out of hand, yes? It's unrealistic to expect that parents and students will demand nothing back for the enormous amount of money they hand over.

It's only going to get worse.

Professors who don't like how things are going should get out now while they can still find another job in a robust economy.

You don't really think things are going to get any better when they're asking, 80k, 90k, 100k a year?

Its the profession they choose knowing what the pay is. They can leave and get another job at any time. If the tuition money is not being used on salaries or properly, then they need to address it with the university or union BUT students/parents are paying for a service and should be getting a good value and quality teaching for that money regardless of what the professor makes.