Letter to the Editor
Are students a university’s customers? Is a “business model” the best way to construe a university’s function? Should university professors be in the business of generating customer satisfaction? Should a university serve the same set of values as Honest Al’s Used Cars?
Such ideas are popular among certain elements of the political fringe. For instance, they are promulgated by the Texas Public Policy Center, a politically-connected, far-right “think” tank, that has the ear of our governor and many state legislators.
But the idea is loony. A university professor has the job of educating students, not making them happy. The customer is always right. Students are not always right. When students do inadequate work professors have the job of telling them so. Like a minister, priest, or rabbi, a professor has to hold his or her charges to a high standard, and admonish them when they fall short.
Put bluntly, a professor who does not occasionally kick some butt is not doing his or her job. Since many university students are products of school environments dedicated chiefly to enhancing students’ self esteem and protecting their feelings, some students are shocked to learn that their efforts do not automatically translate into achievement.
Conditioned to think that whatever pops into their heads is brilliant, and that merely completing the assignments entitles them to A’s, they are nonplused when they get C+ or B- (Believe it or not, I have had students bitterly protest getting an A-). Disparity between expectations and grades often leads to disappointment, and this disappointment sometimes shows up as dissatisfaction on course evaluations.
What would be the result of assessing teaching effectiveness, and allocating monetary awards, based solely upon students’ course evaluations? A colleague of mine put it succinctly: Grade inflation on steroids. Needless to say, this would weaken and undermine public higher education.
Now undermining higher education might be fine for certain constituencies – those who fear universities as bastions of dangerous ideas like liberalism, feminism, and evolution – but rational people want sound and healthy universities. Universities can flourish only if we recognize that their values, aims, and methods cannot be the same as Honest Al’s.
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