I should be preparing my taxes but couldn't resist taking time to add my
two cents to the discussion below about students as customers. When that
concept first emerged in higher education, it was met with immediate
disdain from faculty and not without good reason. It is true that
students are customers in the sense that there are services colleges and
universities provide for which satisfaction is an appropriate measure.
I'm thinking of services such as financial aid, registration, referrals to
support services, etc. But the learning process is more than a simple
business transaction because it involves a highly complex and unusually
personal relationship that requires both student and instructor to
actively participate and collaborate in the process. Students have a much
higher level of responsibility in such a relationship than the average
customer. In terms of non-instructional services, such as counseling,
even then the notion of satisfaction can be misleading. It is entirely
possible that a student who seeks counseling is well served but ends up
dissatisfied because s/he did not like the outcomes. And, of course, the
opposite can be true. A student can feel very satisfied and yet have been
poorly served. After several years of struggling with this concept,
faculty in my college seem to have accepted that there are some exchanges
with students that are similar to those with a customer, for example,
returning papers within a reasonable amount of time, returning phone
calls, submitting grades promptly, etc. But for the most part, neither
they nor I would put the learning process in that category.
As for employer satisfaction, that is a measure which community colleges,
anyway, are trying to get a handle on. In fact, we have a student
right-to- know law which will require us to report job placement
information for vocational programs. In some of our vocational programs
where students are placed right out of school, e.g., paralegal studies,
court reporting, fashion design or park management, and where we have
advisory committees with business representatives, we can capture some of
that information. In more general business programs where students may
continue on for a 4-year degree or where there is not a well defined job
market or when students take time out between school and work, it is hard.
The fact is that the average age of our students is 27, they are mostly
female, attend mostly part-time and are already employed. They come to us
to retrain or enhance skills, something Silicon Valley residents are
becoming quite accustomed to have to do in such a dynamic region. They
come for a few courses, leave for a while, return when they need to --
they are an extremely mobile population and do not follow the traditional
educational routes. They are less interested in degrees and more
interested in short-term certificates that demonstrate they have acquired
specific skills.
I guess I'm saying that tracking this population and gathering data about
employer satisfaction is a real challenge for our systems. We do have one
possible means -- tracking unemployment insurance data and job placement
records through state agencies IF everyone can get comfortable with
sharing people's social security numbers across data bases of different
agencies. Can you see how complex this gets? Still, you are right in
saying that it is a good indicator. Any ideas about how to collect the
data?
Harriett.
[Host's Note: So... LO is more fun that doing your taxes, eh? I'll take
that as a compliment! ...Rick]
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