Timeline for Department member forwarded complaint about professor to that professor
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 30, 2018 at 7:53 | comment | added | Patrick B. | If the student wanted to "speak to a manager," they should have sought out one of the professional administrators whose specific job it is to manage undergraduate education. One reason for rising tuitions is (thought to be) the fact that there are now so many more student-facing administrators, so I suppose they might as well get their money's worth. Typically there's a separate office for undergrad ed in general that's not affiliated with any particular department. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 20:26 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | @ZachLipton The view you present of academia makes some sense from an undergraduate perspective, but many or most graduate students are just as much "employees" (i.e., research assistants, GTAs, etc.) of the university as they are "customers" (i.e., students). Just because large amounts of money are involved, doesn't mean all the concepts that work in other businesses apply to academia. One easy way to understand this is that students are actually paying to be judged on their work and merits, and sometimes harshly. A normal customer service approach would have all students get straight As. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 18:17 | comment | added | Jeremy Weirich | @xLeitix What makes you say that studying at university isn't a business transaction? Failing to recognize it as such makes it difficult to identify with where the OP is coming from. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 13:17 | comment | added | xLeitix | @DavidZ fwiw, I was thinking about the business analogue differently: if you are an employee and you go to your boss about a decision and don't like the outcome, you can't go to that person's manager for a re-ruling either (because OP said he was working in industry before). I understand that this isn't a great analogue, but neither is seeing studying at a university as a business transaction, no matter how much money you pay. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 6:09 | comment | added | Zach Lipton | To the student, academia is a business, particularly in the United States where undergrads are often paying tens of thousands of dollars a semester to be there. If a student doesn't think they're getting adequate "customer service," damn straight they're going to complain to anybody they think can help; they're making one of the most expensive purchases of their life. That you prefer academia not operate on such crass terms is irrelevant unless you're the one making the loan payments. That, of course, is different from whether such an approach is effective (in this case, it clearly was not). | |
| Jan 28, 2018 at 23:53 | comment | added | David Z | I've definitely heard stories about businesses that do work that way, where managers can and do override decisions by their employees to make a customer happy. So I don't know that "any business" is really accurate. But you're right that academia doesn't work like those businesses. | |
| Jan 28, 2018 at 11:22 | history | answered | xLeitix | CC BY-SA 3.0 |