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Like many people, I worked part-time jobs at bars, restaurants, and coffee shops to supplement my modest teaching assistantship income in graduate school. But I quit that line of work for good when I realized it was beginning to make me...like people less, let’s say. Customer service jobs bring one face to face with the demanding and condescending side of humanity that is particularly pronounced when people don’t get what they want, when they want it. My own frustration with that work was offset by my underlying assumption that I would do it only until I’d secured my first real teaching position.
Imagine then my disappointment in witnessing, over the course of a decade, the profession of higher education become a veritable branch of customer service. Colleges are struggling to present to the degree-seeking public the image of an academic experience worth every cent. And college students have assumed the role of high-paying customers who believe they are entitled to the best grades no matter what—as long as it’s quick and easy.
A college degree is a commodity, there’s no denying that. College costs a lot of money, and students understandably want to get what they paid for. But the fact that online and community colleges can provide a college degree at lower cost has caused an epic power shift in favor of colleges’ current and prospective high-paying customers. Demands and standards used to flow from the professor to the student. Now they flow in the opposite direction.
Fifteen years ago, when I began teaching at the college level, it was a rare curiosity to be challenged by a student about a grade. Now, professors are under constant threat of being challenged on every grade assigned that is not an A, no matter how minor the assignment and no matter how obviously flawed the student’s work is. Institutes of higher education have become an open marketplace where students bargain and negotiate aggressively for the product they feel they deserve. Common refrains from students include demands (“I need to get an A in this class”), negotiations (“I’ll even take a C in your class”), and appeals to empathy (“If I don’t get a B in your class, I won’t be able to play sports next fall”). Even though students are not in charge of assigning their own grades, they seem to genuinely believe that they are.
Likely these common student tactics are annoying to all professors, but what really worries me is what lies behind these sentiments, namely, a profound lack of understanding of the real purpose of a college education: to learn how to learn and to learn new things. American youth may be crazy about fast food, but they seem to have lost their appetite for real education. If only college had a drive-thru window.
Although I don’t like it, I understand the common student refrain of going to college only to “get a good job”; it’s pragmatic and realistic and might be the right mindset for today’s extremely competitive job market. It’s no longer okay to graduate with a terminal bachelor’s degree in the humanities and have no idea how to turn that into a livable salary and fulfilling life. But no matter the specific end goal, the means should be the same: four years of real learning and real engagement, creating new neural connections that deepen an individual’s understanding of self, other, society, responsibility, and purpose. Negotiating an A when the student produced C work flies in the face of all of this.
Professors can either succumb to these student pressures, which in the long run does the students a serious disservice, or resist these pressures and become the professor to avoid. Students increasingly ask to “speak with the manager” when they don’t get the grade change they’re demanding of their professor. I’ve been lucky to have department chairs stand behind my assessment of student performance—which is, after all, our job as educators.
When teaching introductory philosophy classes, I sometimes get the impression from students that they are disinterested not only in the content of philosophy (which is okay; philosophy is not for everyone), but also in the process of learning, which is bad news for everyone. If higher education is operating under a customer service model, it’s failing; despite our best attempts to deliver service with a smile, the customers seem dissatisfied, disengaged, and ready to move on. And while I don’t miss those demanding customers impatiently awaiting their second drink, I find myself, when peddling philosophy in the classroom, feeling nostalgic about having something to offer that is in such high demand.
