Eduardo's dilemma about why students are not treated as customers.
I was shocked! More than one faculty member made me understand that I'm here to learn, not to voice opinions, and not to expect anything...
Interestingly, in the Marketing assignment, we talked about customer-centricity but the professor was quick to insert a caveat: this doesn't apply to you "You are students!"
I have paid an important amount of my and my family's savings and I felt entitled to be a respected customer in an MBA program. Reflecting on that in hindsight, the word customer was never used on any occasion in my academic journey. Candidate was common, student as well. Customer? Never!
Eduardo nailed it down. Though the Higher Education industry operates in similar terms to many customer-centric industries, it still has difficulties in accepting that students are customers...
In their defense, higher education institutions make it difficult to buy their products. It's one of the few industries in which the provider decides who is allowed to buy the product, a.k.a. the admissions process. This selectivity seems to buy institutional entitlement to reverse the common understanding: "I buy, I have the right to complain."
Fortunately, an increasing number of academic institutions make customer-/student-centricity their paramount goal, and not surprisingly (just look at other industries), their business is striving.
To Higher Education Institutions: Though the Admissions Process enables the institution to choose who can purchase the academic product, the candidate, also known as the customer, still has the power of choice.
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