Are Students Customers? the Metaphoric Mismatch between Management and Education

Abstract

As teachers, we encourage our students examine way they use language. Too often, we sidestep this recommendation and avoid subjecting our own linguistic habits critical scrutiny. This essay examines equation of students with customers, an equivalence that has gained popularity as total quality management (TQM) has infused educational institutions. Increasingly, metaphors that originate beyond education are being imported describe and direct educational processes. The importation of terminology from management theory raises several issues central how education is conceptualized and practiced. Closer attention student-as-customer metaphor generates warnings about unreflective transfer of language from business education. By exploring limits of student as or student as consumer, range of metaphor's applicability education will be tested. Does conceptualizing students as customers represent a useful extension of management terminology education, or does resemble a colonization, an attempt to impose a foreign worldview, as a language shapes reality for those who use it (Baldwin, 1994, p. 125)? The Application of Management Theory Education The first sentence in a recent book describing application of total quality management higher education states: in American higher education can be directly attributed lack of vision, lack of insight, and lack of skill of many administrators who lacked any formal, even informal, management (Cornesky et al., 1992, p. 7). Presumably, training in management will solve problems in higher education because they are attributable absence of such training. Naturally this pronouncement fails account for several factors. Many businesses, primary repositories of trained managers, routinely encounter problems no amount of management training can solve. Furthermore, higher education fared quite well for centuries before term 'management' was applied business and before management courses found their way into college catalogues. The total quality movement in education extends W. Edwards Deming's philosophy of management from manufacturing service-oriented settings (Dobyns & Crawford-Mason, 1994). By 1990s, battle cry of competition resounded in educational circles much as did for American industries in 1980s (Coate, 1993). TQM now has become the rage in higher education (Fisher, 1993, p. 15). Responding market pressures similar those that had operated on American corporations, educational reformers have seen an urgent need for America keep pace with other industrialized nations in basic skills. Inefficiency, reduced competitiveness with other nations (Beaver, 1994), and dissatisfaction with performance closely resembled complaints leveled against American businesses. Similar problems seem mandate similar solutions. TQM could work for American business, could work for American education. Customer orientation forms a cornerstone of TQM philosophy. Quality is defined in terms of customer satisfaction: customer's judgment not only determines how quality is measured but how is defined in first place (Peters, 1987; Fenwick, 1992). In higher education, vocabulary of TQM brings assumptions of equivalencies: students are customers or consumers, and educational institutions should apply principles of customer service gleaned from businesses. Given success of TQM in reducing defects in manufacturing and in improving customer service, question arises: If we can do for widgets, why not for students? (Brigham, 1993, p. 47) The record of TQM's effects in service industries has been spottier than in manufacturing, so some commentators have urged caution in applying total quality concepts education (Brigham, 1993; Keller, 1992; Fisher, 1993). The issue of how well language and methods of corporate management apply higher education assumes great importance, especially as colleges and universities face financial straits and competition similar those plaguing American businesses. …