Putting the Customer First in College:
"The U.S. higher education marketplace is complex. It boasts multiple stakeholders, among them taxpayers, parents, federal and state governments, colleges and universities and of course the students. But there is only one real customer—the individual who chooses to pursue an education.
Students make customer choices based on available information, interests, abilities and life circumstances that will mostly determine whether they succeed in obtaining an education with a meaningful credential. The problem is our higher education marketplace today does not account for this customer focus that is so important to success. In large measure, this is because education policies that guide this marketplace are largely crafted by the dominant voices in higher education—colleges and universities with the resources to sway elected officials. Students as customers have no voice in this policy conversation."
Bringing a customer focus to higher education would empower students as customers and, especially for low-income students, provide information and support to make postsecondary education a viable option amid their work and life responsibilities. Customer focus can help build a student-centric higher education system that delivers quality, flexible learning experiences that lead to educational credentials for personal growth and career success.
In most sectors of our economy, customer focus is paramount, as it should be in education, too. Customer focus could yield a more student-centric system through the development and dissemination of user-friendly “truth-in-education” information that helps students make “best-fit” choices regarding which education provider to select based on customer preferences such as: academic quality, price, convenience, learning style, beginning education level and the anticipated return on their investment in education. After all, an estimated 60 percent of undergraduate students are not on the “four-years-and-graduate” program, instead attending classes in a variety of non-traditional ways at multiple institutions over many years.
Customer focus has an additional benefit. Understanding how students make choices and actually experience higher education in many different ways would benefit all the other stakeholders who invest in a students’ education, among them parents, taxpayers, and the educational institutions themselves.
Developing a student-centric focus for higher education and using it to empower customer choice will require a neutral, independent voice that is equally capable of gathering U.S. Department of Education data and analysis to provide critical customer information as well as providing a national voice to help students find the best education providers given their needs and educational desires. The Department of Education should take on this ombudsman role by forming, a quasi-independent, Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education. This new office should:
Produce a College Customer Bill of Rights that enforces truth in advertising regarding: academic quality, student services and support and flexibility and convenience.
Ensure that mandated federal data gathering, assembly, analysis and presentation are conducted in ways that empowers students with usable customer information.
Be an ombudsman for students with state officials and regional accrediting agencies to integrate and publish “truth-in-education” customer data and direct student customers to the appropriate officials when they have grievances with their education provider.
It is time our nation had public policies and institutions that provide for the needs of their customers, the students, by building a student-centric higher education system.
