At one point, we had a departmental meeting to see if there were any students in our bachelor\/undergraduate programs who, with a slight grade adjustment from a fail to a pass, could progress to the next academic year. Even low fails were reconsidered. This ensured higher student retention, met the budgeted tuition revenue for the following year, and satisfied university boards. Did these students deserve it? I didn’t think so. But there I stood, watching it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might think, “What a perverse incentive! Where does this guy work?!” This really happened, during a rainy summer in the United Kingdom (UK), where I completed my PhD and worked as a senior lecturer for four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will provide more examples from my time in the UK\u2014they matter. For instance, I was required to attend a semi-mandatory seminar on ‘Tort and Contract Law’ as part of communication training for open days. There, I learned (or rather, was subtly pushed) to refer to \u201csubjects\u201d rather than specific \u201ccourses\u201d when talking to students and their parents. This kept us as teaching staff “safe.” Why? If we verbally stated that a particular course, like “Introduction to Policing Studies and Criminology,” would be offered next year, but the name changed to “Introduction to Policing,” our verbal contract would be breached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such verbal agreements at open days had to be avoided at all costs. Otherwise, British students, who took out hefty loans of about \u00a310,000 per year in tuition, would have grounds for complaints or even to leave. Whether such consequences actually followed was unclear. But the fear was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A total debt of \u00a330,000 for a bachelor’s\/undergraduate\u2019s degree, plus expensive living costs, makes British students acutely aware of their consumer rights. Failure of a student was often blamed on the lecturer, the program, or the university, but never the student. The student is the customer, and the customer is king, which I actually understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n