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Showing posts with the label "students as customers"
Confessions of a foreigner Scratch beneath the surface... I am a person who engages only in matters of substance and matters which the British generally don't like to talk about or feel uncomfortable when they hear them. It disturbs their faith. Here are two examples:  1. I made a mistake the other day and has a chat with an English. A woman openly said to me: "a language teacher must not express his/her political/cultural views in class. "What about freedom of speech," I asked. She went silent then she said: "but you are a language teacher, why should you talk about other things?" I asked whether what she said had anything to do with the fact that students are considered customers and my views might annoy/upset them, unlike in other countries where students do not pay £9,000+ for their higher education. She agreed, but still opposed me expressing my views in class.  This is not an isolated case in my life in London. A couple of years agao I upset
"Universities are businesses. Students are customers. The more customers, the better the business does. And of course, the best way to retain a customer is to keep her happy. I’d suggest that happiness for students might arise from challenge, from hard work fairly rewarded, or from the acquisition of new skills. But there is of course a quicker route: you keep students happy by not failing them. And then – surprise! – when they graduate they are not literate, or numerate, or knowledgeable enough to perform the work they have been studying for." 'The difficulty is the point'
Britain’s university system now “serves a renewed patrimonial capitalism and its ever-widening inequalities.”  —  John Holmwood’s 2014 valedictory message as British Sociological Association president.      The Rise of the Corporate University in the UK