By Dr. Philip Baczewski, Associate Director of Academic Computing

A modest proposal

We live in the era of online education. We are seeing the beginnings of a radical change in the way that education is delivered in the United States and around the world. Along with the new online delivery methods for education is the corporatization of education. Private companies want to manage our public school systems. We want to see corporate fellows on campus, and corporate skyboxes in our football stadiums, and corporate logos on our sports jerseys. In fact, you might say that the country is gripped by a culture of corporate interaction. Students see themselves as consumers of education and they want to be treated as customers. To support our customers, we'll have to retool our data systems and move to a system of education in any place, at any time, and for any reason.

In light of this new view of the student as consumer, it only seems logical to retool some of the terminology and attitudes of the past and bring a modern face to education. One glaring deficiency in the relationship with our customer is the whole concept of grades. The last thing a customer wants is to be rated on how well they utilize the product you are selling. To boost customer retention, it is suggested that the letter grade system be abandoned and replaced by the concept of course completion. Customers should be assured that they have satisfactorily completed a course without the imposition of a judgmental rating of the worth of their work.

Of course, the concept of failure is totally counter to customer retention. The worst thing you can do is tell a customer that they have failed. Instead, such a condition should be referred to as a completion deficit. If necessary, customers can be informed that they have a course completion deficit and may need to avail themselves of further course product to alleviate the deficit. In this way the concept of a chronic failure is replace by a condition of completion deficit disorder, a much more soothing explanation which removes any fault from the customer and may open up avenues for new Federally funded research.

The whole manner of education is changing and deserves a more contemporary description. Classes are no longer discernible in online instruction, where individuals can contract for their learning needs and pursue their goals in the comfort of their own home, without subjecting themselves to the distractions of others in an unfamiliar and rigid classroom setting. Instead, we simply have courses. Knowledge is referred to as content, and the delivery of these courses is now our product. This allows us to assure our customers that our courses contain the most up-to-date and useful content and are among the finest product offered by contemporary universities.

Obviously, the title of professor is totally counter to customer relations. For the efficient delivery of the course product, content needs to be relayed in an objective and inoffensive manner. Customers want an expedited learning process and do not want to be subjected to extraneous professed opinion which might require them to evaluate content from several diverse perspectives. The title of professor can be replace with that of content engineer, which is a much more contemporary term and much more impressive to those in a corporate culture. Content engineers will be aided by content transfer specialists who will provide the technical resources to ensure that the course product is readily available online.

Finally, with a more corporate approach to our customer base, the appropriate measures for customer retention, and the attention to providing an accessible product, we can utilize corporate methods for attracting people to our product. Our customers can be told that graduates are among the leaders in industry, government, and the arts, without us having to provide the detail that they are among them waiting their tables, washing their cars, and baby sitting their children. In this way, we can maximize our delivery of product and take a leadership position in developing a broad customer base. If we are Swift, we will determine exactly how to proceed with this proposal.