These may seem like minor points, but they are not unimportant.

These are not minor points! Do people actually do these things?

Sure they do Ltw. But not usually after the first two years. By then most of the morons have flunked out.

It left one thing unsaid: the entire faculty learns about how you behave. If you've developed a reputation as a hard worker and a good person, they will be on your side. You will get breaks not available to the common drone - exactly as you would earn tolerance of an employer who has come to trust you.

In the classes I have taken the Syllabus has just been the schedule for the class...what topic is planned for what day or week. The last go around the information was always on a class web page and always had how to contact the professor (and when you should contact a TA instead (almost always)) and often times how to find their office. They seem to really like to hide offices. Instructions for one was something like this.

Smith building 345: In Johnson Hall go to the fourth flour, head East down the South Hall way (430-481), at the end there are stairs down to Smith building 3rd floor- continue down those. Continue down Smith 3rd floor South Hall way until you reach Dr. adfafe Q. gidkfisdf memorial hall way (it is fifth from the stairs). Turn down the hall way and continue until you find the Dewey D. Brown center for research. Go into the reserach center, find my office door in the back left corner behind the filing cabinets.

When I was in college, a student asked the question as to why the student parking was so far away. She reasoned that most businesses make their employees park far away and leave the up-close parking for the customers. Her view was that students of the university were its customers, so they should be able to park closer.

My instructor was angry and didn't appreciate the viewpoint.

But I'd say fair is fair. Once colleges and universities became places that sold degrees for money, it's not much of a stretch to view the students as paying customers.

Most of those students wouldn't even be there if they didn't need that piece of paper to get a job.

"Gratitude is good: “Send a thank you card when you graduate; ..."

I taught a computer class at a college in the mid 90"s. I still have a thank you note from a student who struggled and credited me for helping her get through the course. It gives me a lift whenever I happen to open that old briefcase.

"...advises Texas State University Psychology Department lecturer Carin Perilloux." GO BOBCATS!

Anywho, I wish I'd formed better relationships with my professors- written thank-you notes, etc. I'm considering pursuing an MBA in the next few years, and it would have been helpful to have those relationships. Plus, I like smart people. I was a good student, I just wasn't memorable at all. Of course, it's hard to memorable when you go to a big state school.

What Pirate Jo said.

If you work for the people who pay me, you might be my supervisor. If you work for the people I pay, you are not my supervisor.

As a business owner or employee, maybe you get to pick your clients - but that's usually the right of small business owners, not a person who works as a cog in a large machine that is a degree granting enterprise. Sure, reputations and relationships are made in both directions.

In this business relationship in which someone who pays money for a service, how are students not consumers?

Please don't tell students to notify their profs of every absence! The profs usually don't care because the reasons are often ridiculous (I'm going on vacation with my parents in the middle of the semester; my best friend's boyfriend's best friend was in an accident and I had to be there, etc.). It's on the student to decide what's worth missing class for.

And it's on the student to find out what he or she missed and get notes from a classmate, not the prof! Too many students expect a private recap from the prof at their convenience, and individual instruction is not the prof's responsibility (unless it's a tutorial).

In this business relationship in which someone who pays money for a service, how are students not consumers?

While Perilloux's jobs-and-supervisors analogy isn't perfect, it does hold in a couple of ways. First, regardless of who's paying whom, there's an expectation of effort and performance on the student's part, and the teachers will notice, particularly in upper level classes where there are fewer students. Second, even if both the teachers and the taught deny it, there is a heierarchical relationship between professor and student. The professor would be right to expect at least a little deference, and a wise student would give it.

The consumer-supervisor analogy fits poorly. This is an imbalanced contractual situation. Yes the student pays money, but the university is not bound to provide services or grant a degree.

When I buy produce from the supermarket I pay money and get a good. The university analogy is you pay money at the start of the year to the supermarket for all your groceries but they can halt delivery at their own discretion without penalty.

The student is in an inferior position in this contract and it shows.

Telling students to go to class and if not, to provide reasons for your absence is not taking into account that people learn in different ways, and for some, lectures are inefficient methods of learning. In dental school, I often skipped my medical classes in order to study on my own in the library. I was still prepared for every small groups conference, graduated and am in fact in pathology training, which is as close to medicine as I can get. My friend is the same way. She couldn't abide by the slow speech that professors use and needed to listen to the recorded lectures at warp speed. We are paying for our education, let us decide how to best learn and synthesize the knowledge.

I like that thank you note idea, though. I might do that.

Way too much of this is about who is in the superior contractual position. It's basic human decency.

I'm currently working in a project where people just don't turn up to scheduled meetings, have to be reminded and dragged from their desks, or get there half an hour late without having the decency to ring ahead. I was late yesterday and hated myself for it (but I did ring to explain I was stuck in traffic). It's insulting, disrespectful, and embarrassing when people just don't show up to something organised a week before. I can't see any reason why people, consumers or not, shouldn't start learning this in college.

Katie, I will agree with you that it's not always necessary to declare your absence from large attendance lectures. I never did. Small groups are different as you pointed out. Wish I'd done the thank you note thing though. 20 years later is probably a bit late.

1) What Katie said.

2)
The student is in an inferior position in this contract and it shows.

Posted by: Ben at November 13, 2014 1:39 PM

True - however, thanks to the internet and affordable technology, hopefully not much longer (increased transparency, increased access, lower costs and more opportunities to gain and demonstrate skills).

3)
First, regardless of who's paying whom, there's an expectation of effort and performance on the student's part, and the teachers will notice, particularly in upper level classes where there are fewer students.

Second, even if both the teachers and the taught deny it, there is a heierarchical relationship between professor and student. The professor would be right to expect at least a little deference, and a wise student would give it.

Posted by: Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at November 13, 2014 11:35 AM

Sure. Performance on the student's part is required. Effort will vary, and for the reasons Katie mentioned, I assert that attendance requirements are a crutch put in place by academic accrediting boards vying for relevance, and teachers who are not confident in the ability to create a compellingly relevant class experience.

Too many people who are paid to teach are subject matter experts but have no training or talent in the skill set of teaching. Worse yet are the people who don't create a specific rubric for what skills and knowledge to obtain through the class, along with a clear plan for how the instruction and course experience provides the opportunities to gain those skills and knowledge. A lot of these people are better replaced by videos available online for free.

As for the hierarchical relationship - the more market choices students have about how to get the training and guidance needed to become competent and demonstrate competence in a skill set, the less hierarchy in the teacher-student relationship. No gatekeeper = no hierarchy.

Banker, I got a kick out of your description. Some years ago, I worked in a building in a NASA center in which trying to give directions to people who didn't know their way around the building was pointless, on account of things like this: The shortest way from a particular point A to another particular point B was to go outside, walk part way around the building, and come back in through another entrance.