Are College Students University Customers?

Newswise — When a student brought a class project to his office recently, R. Zachary Finney, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of South Alabama, gave him a 20 percent penalty on his grade for turning the project in late.

Finney's course guidelines clearly stated the penalty for late projects, but the student, nonetheless, became angry over his poor grade.

"I have this guy in my office who thinks he is a graduating senior"¦and who was late to class all semester and he turned in his paper late," Finney explained. "And after I gave him the 20 percent penalty, he stood in my office telling me how angry he was with me and that now he is not going to graduate. From my perspective I had done exactly what I had told him I was going to do and now that he wasn't going to graduate he was angry at me for it."

Treena Gillespie, also an assistant professor of management at the University of South Alabama, said this type of reaction represents a growing sense of entitlement by students, and is becoming a problem among professors she and Finney have spoken to. She is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP).

In competition for the most and best applicants, colleges and universities are increasingly using customer service initiatives to attract students. But treating students as customers may have a negative effect upon their education, Gillespie said, if it leads students to feel entitled to good grades or prone to complaining to get what they want but don't deserve.

After dealing with increasing problems in their classes, Gillespie and Finney decided to research the relationship between students' perceptions as university customers and their educational attitudes and behaviors.

"While there is information about this practice of treating students as customers, called the student-as-customer (SAC) model, no one had really researched what the implications were for students' education," Gillespie said.

The two conducted a survey of 1,025 undergraduate students at the University of South Alabama in the spring of 2008 and presented their findings at the 24th Annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference in April. Of those surveyed, 52 percent perceived themselves as customers of the university, responding positively to the statement, "As a student, I believe that my role is that of a customer of the university."

After measuring other attitudes and behaviors, including entitlement, satisfaction with the university, attitude toward complaining, and involvement with education, the researchers found that students who considered themselves customers of their university were more likely to feel entitled to complain—regardless of their satisfaction with the university—but they were not any more involved in their education than were other students.

Satisfaction, but not customer perceptions, predicted educational involvement—meaning those students who were most satisfied with their education showed the most involvement while those students who viewed themselves as customers were not necessarily more involved in their education than other students. The results of the study may have significant implications for students and universities, Finney and Gillespie said. Their results indicate that SAC perceptions by students are prevalent and, "more importantly," their report says, "a student who holds SAC perceptions is also likely to hold attitudes and engage in behaviors that are not conducive to success as a student."

To aid universities, Finney and Gillespie offered several recommendations in their research including making sure students are vested in their education.

"In light of these findings," they write, "universities may find it useful to inform their student 'customers' that they must co-produce their desired educational outcomes. Universities could emphasize students' accountability for helping create knowledge and meeting learning expectations."

Otherwise, the research warns, "universities that implement customer-service initiatives may attract students only to find that those students are not inclined to work hard."

In particular, the researchers' results suggest that universities using the SAC model could benefit by specifically defining the student's role as a "co-producing" customer rather than as a passive recipient of knowledge.

"If we tell students they are customers then we have to be careful in setting up expectations of accountability for them," Gillespie said. "We would rather they be viewed as a co-producer in learning than a passive recipient. We aren't necessarily saying the customer model is the wrong model, but if universities are going to do that then one of our recommendations from this research is that we still need to explain that students are co-producers, they have a responsibility to participate in their education."

Secondly, the researchers found that satisfaction with the university did not predict the propensity to complain, but it did predict students' involvement with their education. Along these lines, they write, "universities might survey students and recent alumni; the universities might examine the frustrations of those who express the highest involvement with learning."

Overall, Gillespie and Finney say, students taking the role of "learner" and not only "customer" may have the best chance of acquiring a good education.

"College faculty and administrators should be heartened by the fact that those students who are happy in the college environment are those who are strongly involved with the student's traditional role " learner," Finney and Gillespie write in their research.

"For all of their new facilities and extracurricular programs, colleges still satisfy those 'customers' who are engaged in learning. These results suggest that, perhaps, the administrators who have tried to alter the students' traditional role have gotten it all wrong."

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is an international group of more than 7,400 industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists whose members study and apply scientific principles concerning workplace productivity, motivation, leadership and engagement. SIOP's mission is to enhance human well-being and performance in organizational and work settings by promoting the science, practice and teaching of I-O psychology. For more information about SIOP, including a Media Resources service, which lists nearly 2,000 experts in more than 100 topic areas, visit www.siop.org.