After working with colleges and universities in various academic,
administrative and consulting capacities, I have come to a disturbing thought
Colleges care about themselves and their well-being but
not so much about that of their students. They are more concerned with their
reputations and standing than the success of students and their welfare.
Students are not the end focus of too many colleges. They are a means to an
end. That end being the success of the institutions,
Colleges are now more like corporations focused on the
bottom line and attainment rather than in creating great products. They care
about their own preservation and perks more than those of their customers,
their students and their families.
Take for example the issue of sexual assault and rape on
campuses. There are currently 76 schools being investigated by the US
Department of Education for non-compliance with title IX for not responding to rape allegations on
campus. And very many more could be investigated for not taking rape seriously
enough. For example, when a fraternity was found guilty of a gang rape at John
Hopkins, the fraternity was suspended for a year but no expulsions or arrests
were made.
When a student reports an assault on campus, she is often
ignored or her complaint is shuffled to the bottom of the deck to avoid bad
publicity at the school. If a rape is reported most schools do not take the
most appropriate step and turn the case over to the police. No, they try to
handle the issue internally so the disclosure does not get out and taint the
school’s image. Most normally, a charge of rape is investigated by a college
committee that places institutional image above the student’s well-being. There
have been too many cases in which a sexual assault or a rape has been either
denigrated or even dismissed with a minor sanction than what the criminal
system demands. The victim is left traumatized and feeling guilty from the
outcome. The school’s image is more important than a student getting justice.
Or just look at the appalling percentage of students who
actually graduate from a college. Just over 50% of students who start at a
college actually receive a diploma from that school. And it isn’t because they flunk
out. The number of students who flunk out is insignificant in comparison to the
number that leave because they believe the school does not care about them
enough to help them succeed through basic services such as academic assistance.
Colleges do all they can to recruit students with promises of personal attention
and help when needed but they are seldom supplied in the quality and quantity
promised in the marketing. For example, most colleges use peer tutoring rather
than have faculty provide the extra assistance. The undereducated leading the
less educated too often.
Why? Because student success is too often not as
important as faculty and administrative happiness at too many schools. To make full-time
faculty tutor students would be to take them away from doing research or
sitting on their tenured laurels. That would lead to complaints making the
administrators have to deal with so faculty are not pushed to provide the basic
service of extra help and/or tutoring to students in need. Student success is
just not as important as a calm faculty.
The whole issue of college’s selecting students who can
succeed at the school is a basic myth by the way. There are certainly the 300
name brand schools which can and are selective but the other three thousand
plus do not care about admitting students who they know can succeed at the
school. Students are admitted if they can pay tuition and fees. Sure some
students get scholarships to help pay for school but each one of them is seen
as a revenue point for the school. In many cases, the partial scholarships are
just a “loss leader” to get the bulk of the tuition and fees from the student. A scholarship of $5,000 for
a $30,000 school is just part of the recruitment package to get students to
enroll. The schools have figured out how much they need to provide as an incentive
to get the enrollment just like a car company giving “away” $1,000 off the price
of the car to get the buyer into the sale. They know they’ll make it up on
extras such as fees, housing, books and other costs. The scholarships are a
planned part of the sales package to attract students and fill a recruitment
quota even if that student is wrong for the school in many, too many cases.
Why? Students
bring in the money through tuition, federal assistance and state reimbursements
that the school needs to do what it wants whether that be provide release time
for faculty, pay a football coach millions or however else it spends the per
student headcount money that comes in. Numbers count but the individual
students too often do not.
Simply put many too many colleges will accept anyone who can pay all or
at least part of tuition when the school is not meeting its enrollment numbers.
They do this knowing that a great many of those they admit will not succeed and
will need to be replaced, but they will help pay the bills for the semester
they are there. This is crass commercialism similar to recruiting 5’4” me to a
basketball camp. The success of the student is just is not as important as the
revenues of the institution.
Other examples of not caring about students can be seen
in how schools operate. For example, most schools have evening classes yet the
operational offices all close down for the day by 5:00. Students cannot get
their needs attended to. This is done fully knowing that most of the evening
students are non-traditional students coming from a nine-to five job . These
people cannot get to campus during the day but there are no or very few
provisions made for them to get their school business done after 5:00.
Just look at the parking on a campus and you can tell who
is least important. At most schools there are reserved lots for administrators
and faculty close to the buildings. Student parking lots are furthest from the classrooms
and are very often inadequate in the number of places available. What message
does that send? One that says the faculty and administrators are more important
than the reason the school exists, the school’s customers, its students.
Classes are not scheduled around the needs of students
but the desires of faculty and institutional priorities. Faculty decide when
they want to teach a course not when it is best for the students who need to
take them but when they prefer to teach.. Often students have to choose between
required courses scheduled at the same time rather than being able to take the
both of them if they were scheduled with student needs taken into account. Most
often if the school decides that there are not enough students for a course to
be allowed to go even after students have signed up for it, students will find
out in the week or even days before classes start. The students are left short
of the courses they had already signed up for and scheduled their lives around.
They have arranged their work hours, babysitting and schedules around the hours they had signed up
for but at the last moment the school puts its own priorities in place over
those of the students they have contracted with. The class is cancelled and
most normally the student is left high and dry without a course needed to move
forward to graduation because the school decided at the last moment that there
were only with students in the class so that is not enough.
These are but a few examples of how colleges do not care
about students. There are many more and I am sure you can name some on your
campus too. These are all customer service issues that need to be addressed.
Academic customer service which is not coddling students but making certain
they receive the services and attention they need to succeed.
If this makes sense to you, you should get a copy of the new best seller
From Admissions to Graduation: Increasing Success Through Academic Customer Service by Dr. Neal Raisman
1 comment:
Neal, the article above contains several key pieces of information that are not accurate. I would be happy to discuss those with you if you like. president@judsonu.edu
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