I enjoyed reading “A Better Metaphor: Student as Client” (Dec. 10, 2024) by Keith B. Murray. While I completely agree with the premise, we need to go further than simply thinking of our readers as our customers.
Faculty and staff in higher education institutions are stewards of both our students and their education. As such, we take personal responsibility to give them every opportunity to succeed, by maintaining the strict ethical principles outlined in Murray’s article. As administrators, every action we take is for the care and development of our students, and we strive for much more than a client/vendor relationship.
This is an important distinction, because only as administrators can we make ethical decisions about things like whether we accept late submissions, how we grade student work, how we deal with violations of academic integrity, and so on. When we act as managers, we gain this authority. We can talk about difficult decisions with students even when students believe that our decisions may cause backlash. In addition to teaching about a specific subject, we help our students grow and develop as participants in a global community.
In higher education we have introduced our own barriers to this concept. One simple example: At my institution students register for classes by placing them in a “shopping cart,” similar to what customers do on e-commerce sites. It is no wonder that students consider education as a profession. Can our words in a small part contribute to some of the challenges we face when working with our students? Customers want marks. Clients want brands and service. However, as managers we offer a lot. We do our best to support our students.
We qualify ourselves for this role by maintaining the highest ethical standards in everything we do in our work, by listening and offering the best solutions to our students, even if we have to decline a request, and by always putting students first. in our decision making. The change in wording and mindset I’m advocating may sound small, but we need to be more precise in our wording when defining our values and relationships.
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