Get Your Students Hired
Sometimes it is hard for instructors to relize not everyone we deal with is a intelligent individual. Though they do have dreams and aspirations of becoming something in this profession whether we feel they can or cannot we must follow through with the business end to ensure they get the mentoring and training they paid for and we still have a job doing what we love.
A strong distinction should be made between the administrative functions and educational functions of university life. Although traditional educational practices to maintain scholarly standards are absolutely necessary, the merging of business best practices can be cumbersome. Customer focus is one best practice that rings true, but additional autonomy and variation is needed in academic programs to maintain broad educational views and perspectives.
Dr. Gliddon
Charles,
This is a great point. Customer (Student) service is very important in our industry.
The students are our customers and need to be treated as such. If the,I don't care attitude, is present, what prevents the customer from finding somewhere else to go?
Jeffrey,
This is a great post and a great understanding of our education sector. Keeping the lights on is important, but if we are concerned with the student success and the quality of education provided, the lights won't need to be on in the organization.
I agree lil'g I see the same things happening. With a for profit orginization I understand that money keeps the lights on and the rest of us employed, but so does creating a product that emulates what the student, staff, and most importantly the employers that hire what we as educators create want. I know profit plays a big roll in keeping the doors open and student success "retention" is important, but the end result is if what we are creating isn't of any quality the automotive industry isn't going to be interested in what we create, and with a challenged reputation it will be hard to place students in good jobs because the employers won't want them. Intern ultimatley hurting the bottom line.
The students are our customer, but the customer doesnt always know what he or she needs when they go into a store for a specific task, and that is why it is up to us as educators in a certain field to make sure they get all they need, not just what the student thinks he or she needs at the time.
I try to isolate the business role from my classroom and do the best that I can educationally. It is a dangerous road to start down if you start sacrificing your classroom quality just to maintain goals set by management.
Just come in and DO YOUR JOB!! If you are having a bad day, tough, don't let it show to the students, smile etc. then go off and be miserable
Antonio,
The "Edupreneurial Spirit" is being concered with the quality of education and the number of enrollments.
hold yourself to a self controlled professional
level and you won't have a problem with the business or the students.
Roland,
You are correct. Students should succeed at their own will, and we should be there to help them see the successful future. However, there are some students who are not cut out for higher education and we should recognize those students.
Being an educator , teacher or instructor is also a business , in order to keep up enrollments you must put out a good product to attract people to sign up .
It's important to keep that "Edupreneurial Spirit"...a balance of quality education and quality business practices.
I agree that we need to keep in mind that this is a business and our students are our customers but, at what expense? In a for profit educational setting I am seeing "forced success" occurring to keep the numbers up. This doesn't see to me to be the correct way to handle the situation.
Every student is a customer and any customer of any business deservers 100% effort from that business.
John,
You made some great points. First, any business must be about the customer. In the education business we have several customers, from students to suppliers. The smallest changes is also a good point. Sometimes something as simple as a question asked or a facial expression can make a major difference and yield great results.
Keeping up the business end is about customer satisfaction. It is easy to forget that sometimes. In any business you can’t risk falling into "it’s just a job" mentality. Reflecting on our own personal experiences in dealing with any business and the way they do things both good and bad can be applied to what we do in the classroom. Sometimes the smallest changes in the way we do things can yield the greatest results.
I have always liked the idea of treating the student as the customer. There was a time that we preached the students future employers were the actual customer and the student was a "product" that the employer would hire---WOW what a paradigm shift - long overdue.