Faculty tell me at every workshop or presentation I make on
academic customer service that one statement students make really frosts them.
They hate it when students tell them “I pay your salary.”
Why it upsets them so
much I am not completely sure since it is so very true. Students do pay for faculty
and everyone’s salary at a college or university.
If there were no students paying tuition and being counted
for state or municipal financial support there would be no revenue to pay any salaries.
There would be no college to work in so why should the reality of the customers
paying salaries be so irritating?
The student is indeed the customer of the university or
college. The revenue and the financial support they bring are central to a
college’s existence. They fit the definition of a customer too. Someone who
exchanges money or something of value for goods and/or services. Paychecks might
as well be signed “the student body”. But why does that realization upset
people so much on a campus? I am not quite sure but think it has to do with
self-image that academics have. One which is at best confused.
Faculty and others on campus wish to see themselves as above
money; dealing with concerns of the intellect and mind and building the future
through education. They seem to believe that considerations of money are inappropriate
or anti-academic. One cannot reach loftier objectives if held down by the
weight of monetary issues that is why they are left to unions and contracts. Academics
and faculty in particular do not want to lower themselves to financial concerns.
Or so they believe.
The situation reminds me of when I went to France to teach
as a Fulbright Fellow. I was told that the French do not speak about money. It is
too base a subject to discuss. Such discussion would be déclassé. We arrived in
the city of Metz, (a wonderful place by the way, well worth a visit) and were picked
up by a French colleague who would soon become a fast friend. As we drove to
his house we spoke about teaching in French and American colleges. One of the
early questions he asked me was how much an average professor earned. I was
surprised at the question and told him how much I earned and also said that I thought
the French did not talk about money. His reply was “we pretend to not care
about money but as you can see by the number of strikes for higher wages, we do
care quite a bit but want to give off the image that we are above it.”
I think academics are similar. They think about money quite
a bit. I know I did because my salary as a teacher did not always stretch quite
far enough every month it seemed. But I acted as if the pursuit of knowledge
for my research and my students was all I really cared about. I did not want to
see myself as if I were just a working stiff but someone more elevated by being
associated with a college. This after all was a real vocation, a calling that rose above being just a job. I
was educating the future. Researching for new knowledge. The paycheck was just
a result of being an academic; certainly not the reason fort being one.
So I suppose when a student tells a faculty member or anyone
else on campus that “I pay your salary” the statement brings the reality of money into
an otherwise lofty sense of value. It brings it all down to a realization that
is not fully compatible with an academic self-image and sullies it. Even if it
is true.
If this article makes sense to you you will want to obtain a copy of the new book on academic customer service From Admissions to Graduation: Achieving Growth through Academic Customer Service by Dr. Neal Raisman, author of the best seller The Power of Retention.
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