At 12:28 PM 2/25/2000 -0500, Louis_Schmier wrote:
>Before we go off on a tear, tearing our clothes and bemoaning that the
>academic world is coming to an end, let's first get to the basics and
>define our terms. Without judgement, how do we fill in the blank: "the
>student is a customer means___________________.
Louis,
It seems to me that you miss the point--the important question is: How is
the university president filling in the blank? AND, what is the student
respondent assuming "customer" means? I think it is reasonable to infer
from the fact that the president is utilizing an explicit business analogy
("[A survey] ... patterned after surveys done for businesses interested in
meeting and exceeding customer expectations...") that the president is
viewing the student as a customer in the business sense. AND, you can bet
that the student recipient of the survey is going to respond to the
questions as they would any other customer satisfation survey they receive
from Nordstroms, McDonalds, etc.
Keith
Keith Maxwell
Professor of Legal Studies and Ethics |Phone: 253 879 3703
University of Puget Sound |Fax: 253 879 3156
Tacoma, WA 98416 |<www.ups.edu/faculty/maxwell>
