Manage customer service for Higher Education

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students at universities spend a lot of money on their university education they are charged to learn and there's a temptation for universities therefore to treat students primarily as customers and I think that's a bad idea and I think I've got a better one I have been a student and I have been an educator at universities for nearly 40 years and I love it and it's still a big part of my life right now I love what universities do they share information they encourage debate the help students find their new identity and grow their strengths they do research they support debate they provide a haven for unpopular ideas I love all of them so I'm delighted to say that around the world we now have more universities and more students than ever going on to higher education there are over 200 million students in higher education around the world right now and that is going to develop into well over 260 million by 2025 but the supply can't keep up with the demand in terms of volume in terms of quality and in terms of location students are spending a lot of money on their education but I don't think that means we should see students simply as customers in the US the cost of a family car 40 years ago was the same basic core cost adjusted for inflation as it is now university tuition has increased threefold in that time in the UK the charges for fees now and 9,000 pounds tripled from a few years ago and tripled from nearly 10 years ago and they may increase father so maybe students are paying for their higher education and maybe we should treat mice customers because surely they have rights as customers and we need to have a contract I think that's a bad idea and I think I've got a better one people who want to treat students as customers say well it will empower them I don't think that's true at all because it narrows our perceptions of a student's potential it narrows our perceptions of how we can help students it narrows students perceptions of themselves and what they can do if your only tool is a Hammer Every Problem looks like a nail and if your students all look like customers then every engagement with the student feels like part of a commercial transaction if we define students as customers by default we define the university as a supplier and there's a contract between them but in those circumstances in my view the contract is not a bridge it's a wall all of this is a bit of a paradox at the very moment when universities are treating students more like customers real business in the commercial world is increasingly treating their customers like students encouraging purchasers to review goods to explore the pros and cons to argue for and against different kinds of consumer choices and then seeing what a great time they had or what a terrible time they had when they had that purchase many companies now increasingly are de-facto crowd sourcing the marketing crowdsourcing their quality assurance and crowdsourcing their product development by encouraging customers to think of themselves as knowledge agents sharing and checking information and becoming more expert in the use of a certain product or service one of the key areas where this is very important is what's often called Big Data all of the millions of transactions the millions of decisions that people make in their everyday lives are increasingly important for all kinds of reasons but they have a commercial value students when they log on to a distance learning program or when you swipe their car through the library or turn up and check into a classroom or buy something from the student shop or take a few days off because they're not well all that data can be captured by University and is sometimes described as learning analytics there's a huge amount of data data is the new oil as they say and oil has a value and data has a value and student data is particularly valuable some social media companies sell transactions of that type for 70 million to 100 million dollars a year people like Visa how huge divisions just set up to manage analytic data and to sell the big data to other commercial entities educause brilliant organization that provides excellent advice to US universities recently when talking about MOOCs massive online open courses which are generally free generally given away pointed out to senior managers in the US that the number one feature of any business plan to make this what commercially has to be to sell the learning analytics data thank goodness the here in the UK JISC has got a new set of regulations to manage the way that that data is protected if we think about students as customers there's a temptation to sell what we know about them and that's a bad idea and I think I've got a better one students our customers cannot afford to pay for the thing they want which is their education so they borrow the money in the UK about 10 billion pounds is loaned every year to students for their higher education that is going to be within the next 12 months approximately 50 billion pounds in total for a relatively small country by the middle of this century the estimate is by the student loan company for the total amount of money owned by British students is going to be 130 billion pounds students are in debt and that's money taken out of the economy cast a shadow of a much the students do when they graduate in the u.s. the total amount of student debt is known in excess of 1.2 trillion dollars and growing all the time that is more than the total amount of debt on u.s. adult credit cards it is a huge figure and it's growing now some people say what students are customers they are paying for their higher education well I have a view about that in the first instance the simplest way of stopping students being customers and stopping students being in debt is to give them higher education for free but we are not there yet some people say well we should treat students as customers to give them new rights to look after them to give them a good experience customer service in the library discounted fees for graduates special premiere if you do really well and some universities are even suggesting that you get a money-back guarantee if you don't get a great job after doing your course that's a bad idea and I think I've got a better one to me treating students as customers is neither unnecessary not a sufficient condition to treat students well it is not inevitable and where it has happened it is not irreversible in my opinion let's drill down and think about this a little bit more detail I believe that treating students as customers primarily is bad for students it's bad for employers and it's bad for universities and for society why is it bad for students well first of all students if they start to think of themselves as customers because the government's treating them as customers and universities are tempted to treat them as customers when they come to identify the best university for them see it has been a commercial purchase so start to take into account issues about cost and possible returns when students are think about whether they're doing well whether they've been successful you know there's a temptation that they will start to think in commercial terms what has been the return in my investment overlooking the other things that University can give the other things that should be important in terms of an education when students are reflecting on whether they're doing well and whether they're having a good time the danger is they will start to see themselves in terms of whether or not they are a successful customer treating students as customers is bad news for employers and we don't often think about this in my opinion first of all students who are treated as customers and who believe themselves to be customers because the customer role is essentially a passive one start to have a passive relationship with knowledge if students believe they are customers the customer role is really quite a risk-averse one because some was sorting it out for you so students relationship with knowledge starts become a rather conservative one and you won't take risks if you think you're a customer of higher education there's a danger if you're a student that you will finish up failing to see the importance of learning from mistakes if you think of yourself as a customer if something doesn't go quite well in your learning in your engagement knowledge it feels like you're not getting the product you paid for if we're not careful so the other aspect is of course the students who think themselves as customers tend not to build up confidence in communication strengths because customers don't have to have that ironically then the more we treat students as customers the more it is the case that when they get a job they themselves are unable to really look after customers because they themselves have been so passive so treating students as customers is bad for students because it can make them passive and risk-averse and fail to learn from experience and fail to develop communication and confidence in relation to knowledge when the biggest and most important jobs for graduates are in the knowledge economy treating students as customers I think is bad news for universities and for society because it all of a customer is essentially an individual one you have paid for your education not for someone else's on your course it tends to atomize the student experience students just find themselves structurally thinking about their own relationship to what they have paid for so it's a disconnect students from other students it also disconnect students from the research community in a university students are thinking to their to get the degree to learn and that's great and it's really important and I'm the first to recognize that getting your degree for a an individual from a farmer that maybe not had the best opportunities in life have been marginalized universities are transformational so you want to get your degree but a really good degree has to have research at the heart of it giving a university community unique in society almost was researchers are pushing back the boundaries of discovery but if you think of yourself as being a customer and you bought the service of a degree you don't see those things quite so well you can't identify how they are connected to you so treating students as customers this connects the student from the discovery of knowledge that might be going on in the very next door to where they're being taught treating students as customers disconnect students from learning because really good teaching really good curriculum design should have students at the heart of it students are developing the skills of course we are I am everyone is in some way a learner you want to contribute to what you're being taught and treating a student as a passive customer and creates a firewall between the development of course to be taught and the receipt of that course being taught treating students as customers separates them and disconnect them from the university it defines the student as recipient it defines the university as a provider it separates through contract in a way that should be able to bring people together disconnect disconnect disconnect that's what treating a student as a customer does and yet everything we know about sustainability everything we know about civil society everything we know about developing humanity tells us that we should be creating not disconnection but connection connections are what make things great and powerful University should be a powerhouse of connectivity not treating students as customers to atomize them and separate them from all the things that matter so what do we do what is the better idea every student wants to be treated as an individual and students are everyone is but students like all learners like all of us want to be part of something bigger than themselves and that should be the case at university more than any other place in society we can work together on this we don't want students to be passive and compliant and risk-averse we want students who are active and debating and discovering and partners in educational development we want students to be able to shape their learning we want students to shape the learning of others we want students to understand how they can learn from each other we want students to understand how they can support the learning of other people we want students to be part of design teams we really should want students to be part of research and development teams as apprentices yes but part of them not just a recipient of the output that's a really important thing because at the end of the day this is the big idea we should not be treating students as customers because it's bad for students it's bad for employers it's bad for universities it's bad for society at large the most courageous thing that any university can do is treat each students as educators get students in the classroom tear down the walls get students in front of the class the teaching yet students is part of course development teams get students to divine the assessments get them to understand the way they can help others students are incredibly powerful at understanding what they don't know they're incredibly powerful understanding how they want to be taught they don't have the long expertise the long experience that some of the tutors will have but the Olson are expert in themselves and in each other we should make students educators we want students who are active we want students who are innovative if you teach someone for three years you teach them for three years if he turn students who want to into educators they will educate them selves for a lifetime universities are fantastic things they're not perfect but they are innovations we shouldn't ask what can a metaphor we should use to describe students universities and their relationship with students should be the metaphor for the rest of society inclusive supportive innovation risk-taking not being afraid of new ideas not having a contract that separates but a compact that brings people together and that is my better idea we don't want to have the relationship between universities and its students defined by a commercial contract what we want and what we need is that relationship to be defined by compassionate connectivity and that's my idea thank you very much indeed you