Page 128 - Crisis in Higher Education

100 • Crisis in Higher Education

essential to ensure that universities develop effective strategic plans, design
relevant curriculum, and acquire and manage resources appropriately.
As the solution unfolds, these three customer groups are examined.
Two chapters are devoted to students, parents, other family members,
and friends, which is followed by a chapter on potential employer and a
chapter describing the role of government. These chapters represent the
customer pillar on the left side of Figure 5.1, and they are essential for
understanding customers’ expectations. These chapters begin to shape
Table 5.1, which relates the elements of the solution (column headings) to
the root causes (row headings) of the underlying problems. An overview
of these chapters follows.

• Chapter 6: Changing Attitudes and Expectations of Students, Parents,
Family Members, and Friends: Although there are multiple custom-
ers, universities would cease to exist without students. As shown in
Table 5.1, the attitudes and expectations of students and their sup-
porters impact all root causes. This group must be active in working
with states to pressure public universities to improve performance.
When this group is not assertive in discussing rising costs, declin-
ing standards, and other problems, they lose their clout as customers
and costs rise.
• Chapter 7: Becoming Student Centered: The Right Way: Decades ago,
“student centered” became the buzzword to champion efforts to treat
students fairly, which is important. Unfortunately, as universities
became more “student centered,” they did not carefully examine the
needs of potential employers that want graduates with a strong knowl-
edge base. The implication is that learning content and performance
standards should be set by these organizations, not by students. Having
students set standards would be like a state medical board claiming it
is physician centered as it developed its licensure exams. In fact, its
role is to protect the public from substandard physicians. Becoming
student-centered should mean developing teaching tools and methods
that enable students with different learning styles to learn best. When
“student centeredness” is applied improperly, universities lose focus
on efficiency and low costs, performance standards erode, and the lack
of preparation by some students is hidden.
• Chapter 8: Building Bridges to Potential Employers: Universities are
student centered when they prepare graduates for success, whether that
involves finding a good job, gaining admission to graduate school, or