editorially /peaking
Rising Student Consumerism Followine " World War I1 and throueh " the 1960's American higher education was strongly influenced by the values of research-oriented faculties.. esoeciallv in the sciences and the . more technical disciplines. I t was during this time that, in the view of manv observers. undereraduate . procrams became .. distorted h i t h e general pressires to free more research time for research-oriented faculties and to commit increasingly larger proportions of institutional resources for research-oriented activities. In a sense, the academic environment gradually became faculty-dominated during this period. Since the early 1970's, a combination of factors have conspired to shift the balance so that the academic environment has now become student-dominated. While this may appear to be a return to the original intent of higher education, people coucerned with higher education need to he sensitive to the ootentiallv" neeative conseauences arisine" from what David Riesman, a long-time observer of American education, has called "student consumerism." Not onlv institutions, hut also students, need to be wary. The shift in perceived student roles, i.e.. from heine- supplicants to being courted customers, portends serious consequences a t several levels within academic institutions. As institutions compete with each other for students, first administrators and then faculty may hesitate to make demands in the form of rieorous academic reouirements for fear of losine " full time-equivalent students. If students came to he viewed as a desirable commodity necessary to stoke the process of education, one can imagine the equivalent of a bidding war between institutions for student attention. Indeed. some of the tales circulating which described the inducements offered to students with certain perceived desirable characteristics, suggest that a bidding war may have broken out already. A powerful inducement for immature minds would he the relaxation of academic standards, first a t the institutional level and then a t the departmental level. It takes little imagination to suggest that, under these conditions, faculty within an institution could become embroiled in a fierce competition for students as they struggle to maintain their individual reputations and that of their department. At the faculty level, morale would he undermined because curricula would he dictated by market forces rather than by academic considerations. Indeed, i t would not he surprising to see modes of instruction as well as course content signifi-
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cantly altered to accommodate to the pressures generated by consumer-minded students. Although it is difficult to quantize stndent-consumerism, two examples, from the recent experience of a science colleague are sufficient to convey the essence of the mind set. After an examination which emphasized the students' ability to analyze, evaluate, and draw conclusions, an older-than-average student majoring in science education was heard to remark that she did "not have to put up with this nonsense" and was going to transfer to another course. The same colleague was told, on the written part of a standard anonymous teaching evaluation instrument: "You have to understand that there is more to college than learning, I have to he concerned with grades." This position is typically expressed as "I want the grade so I can he a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer-not so I can he a good one, hut so I can make money and compete." Intense student-consumerism could possibly seriously affect the educational process itself. More challenging educational methods would, undoubtedly, yield to those considered less threatening. Intellectually, faculty in such environments might feel more comfortable pursuing traditional fields of scholarship rather than looking to the future and extending themselves beyond the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. Such suggestions may seem far-fetched; however, increasingly numerous reports have appeared which support these ideas. The recent concern with grade inflation and some of the attendant responses by institutions are illustrative. In some institutions where grade-inflation has been recognized as a concern, the faculty cannot agree to have failing grades entered on students' records for fear that it would keep them out of a professional school, an attitude which reinforces the increasingly held implication that college and university studies are really a prelude to a professional career. In effect the college or university experience has come to be perceived by many as a "high-level" vocational process which has no merit in and of itself. Such a position relative to the general educational process is manifested in the laws of a t least one state which requires career planning in the secondary school curricula. Somewhere, somehow, the ill-defined spirit of higher education has been lost, perhaps it never existed, but surely there is more to the educational process than training "profesJJL sionally-oriented" students.
Volume 58
Number 10 October 1981
75 1
