Undergraduate orientations towards higher education in Germany and England: problematizing the notion of ‘student as customer’

There is a great deal of discussion in the academic literature around how the current conditions in higher education frame students as customers. Observers are of the view that rankings and marketing, an increased focus on student satisfaction, and particularly tuition fees, encourage an instrumental, passive attitude towards a university education. Given the volume of attention directed towards this topic, it is perhaps surprising that there is relatively little scholarship that examines it empirically. Some who have addressed it presumed a customer/consumer orientation in students and have been somewhat—but not entirely successful—in generating evidence to confirm those assumptions. It appears that the expectations of this instrumental, passive orientation are being realised in part, but that this is also mediated by other dispositions. What could be considered to be missing from the analysis thus far is an exploration of how students make university-related decisions (not simply what choices are based on) and how they understand the respective roles of the student and university. This study begins to fill that gap, exploring the orientations towards university of undergraduates in Germany and England, two countries where the diffusion of market conditions in higher education policies has been somewhat contrasting. Distinctions between the German and English students did emerge, but these were less based on those countries’ unequal engagement with tuition fees and rankings and more to do with other aspects of their university cultures and the world beyond their degrees. This suggests that how people approach their time as students is more complex than some of the literature assumes. Furthermore, at the very least, any consideration of this topic must include an analysis of how students themselves understand and experience their higher education and broader social contexts.     

电大开放教育实施客户关系管理的策略分析——基于基层电大开放教育学生管理视角

内容摘要：电大开放教育经过十多年的发展取得了巨大成就,同时面临着严峻的挑战。引入客户关系管理,是提高学生管理的效率和质量,实现开放教育可持续发展的重要途径。基层电大开放教育学生管理应当树立以学生为中心的市场营销观念,拓展学生管理的空间,将学生管理工作分为潜在求学者管理、在校学生教育、学生就业服务、校友跟踪服务四个管理模块进行分层管理,并引入或自主研发CRM软件,建立覆盖全国电大系统的客户管理平台,采用现代CRM管理技术进行学生客户关系管理。     

SERVMO: A Measure for Service-Driven Market Orientation in Higher Education

With the intensified pace of globalization and increasing customer expectations, the higher education sector, like other economy sectors, faces increasing competition in terms of serving customers better. Service has been recognized as an effective tool for a competitive advantage. Thus, there is always a need for a more effective way of improving service, specifically in higher education. For this, a strategic and service-oriented marketing construct that is empirically operationalized and tested is deemed necessary. However, this measure of customer-perceived market orientation for service has yet to be developed for academic and practical purposes.

This paper presents the scale development for a service-driven market orientation (SERVMO) in higher education using data from Malaysian institutions of higher learning. The perceptions of senior students were analyzed and the results show that the proposed multi-dimensional construct consists of six components, namely customer orientation, competitor orientation, inter-functional orientation, performance orientation, long-term orientation, and employee orientation. This construct is closely correlated with service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Some key implications and future research are also discussed.     

Student-customer orientation at a higher education institution: the perspective of undergraduate business students

Existing literature is polarized and primarily conceptual on the topic of student-customer orientation. Research into this phenomenon has failed to realize that higher education as such consists of several different educational experiences and has therefore addressed and studied the issue at too general a level, i.e. at the level of the higher education institution (HEI) as a whole, not at the level of educational experiences that an HEI provides. Based on a validated model of educational experiences, validated student-customer orientation questionnaire [Koris, R., & Nokelainen, P. (in press Koris, R., & Nokelainen, P. (in press). The student-customer orientation questionnaire (SCOQ): Application of customer metaphor to higher education. International Journal of Educational Management. [Google Scholar]). The student-customer orientation questionnaire (SCOQ): Application of customer metaphor to higher education. International Journal of Educational Management] and a survey conducted among business students (N?=?405) in Estonia, the aim of this article is to identify whether in which categories of educational experience and to what extent students expect an HEI to be student-customer oriented. The results of the study show that students expect to be treated as customers in some, but not all categories of educational experience that an HEI offers.     

现时代高校网络道德教育存在的问题及教育解析

现时代互联网已成为我们生活中不可缺少的一种信息工具,网络在大学生信息交流、人际交往、视野拓展等方面显现出越来越重要的作用,但同时也对大学生的道德构成了冲击,大学生的网络道德现状令人担忧。对高校的网络道德教育进行研究无疑十分迫切也十分重要。本文仅针对网络时代下高校网络道德教育存在的问题,从教育的角度进行分析,为从根本上解决高校的网络道德教育问题提供一些基本思路。     

Why university students choose an international education: A case study in Malaysia

Why has Australian offshore higher education become the educational investment of choice for many students? What benefits do students anticipate from this education? What is the relationship between educational goals and educational experience? To address these questions, this paper draws on findings from empirical research conducted with students studying at an offshore campus of an Australian university in Malaysia. It was found that students typically chose to enroll with the Australian university to receive an international education. Reasons offered for seeking an international education effectively delineated two groups of students. For Malaysian nationals, an international education was valued largely as a passport to employment with (Western) multinational corporations operating in Malaysia. Generally the Malaysian students made positional investments in Australian offshore higher education. For non-Malaysian students an international education was typically selected as an aid to procuring a new identity. These students chose an international education with the hope of expunging provincial outlooks. From international education, they wanted new ways of viewing the world, new habits of thinking and new skills and approaches. They sought a personal metamorphosis. These students, therefore, typically made self-transformative investments in international education. The paper further shows that investment choices influenced the way students experienced their education. Of the two populations distinguished by investment type, students who made self-transformative investments were more likely to respond positively to challenging education experiences associated with studying at the campus.     

The evolution of the student as a customer in Australian higher education: a policy perspective

In 2014, the Australian Federal Government attempted to de-regulate higher education fees so as to allow universities to set their own tuition fees. The associated public debate offer critical insights into how the identity of a student as a ‘customer’ of higher education is understood and deployed when developing higher education policy. This paper uses the 2014 Australian higher education reforms as a lens through which to further scholarly research into the student-as-customer metaphor and to see how it is influenced by the perceptions and understandings of policy actors external to the higher education sector. These include politicians, special interest groups, the students and their parents and prospective employers. This study reveals that the public/private nexus—both of funding and benefit—problematizes traditional conceptualisations of students and others as higher education customers. In turn, this restricts the ability or desire of policy actors to describe how the student functions as a customer as a consequence of market reform. This inability compromises the development of effective and sustainable higher education policy.     

University as vocational education: working‐class students’ expectations for university

Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working‐class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first‐generation, working‐class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss their reasons to attend and their expectations for university, and the implications of their attitudes for their future success at university. Analysis of the interview data shows how the relatively high and risky investment of working‐class youth in education leads to strong utilitarian and vocational orientations toward university. Although a narrow focus on the career potential of university is generally perceived as problematic, I argue that it may also help working‐class students in their transition to university. Nonetheless, a critical educational process is necessary that not only helps working‐class students achieve their educational and occupational goals, but also understand their unique status in a social institution that they entered as outsiders.     

试析书法教育在大学生素质教育中的缺失及对策简

书法教育是大学生素质教育的重要内容,在培养复合型高素质人才的过程中发挥着不可替代的特殊作用。但是,由于多种原因,高校书法教育却长期得不到重视甚至是缺失的。为增强大学生综合素质,实现高等教育人才培养目标,充分发挥书法教育的育人功能,大学生书法教育要与时俱进,定位准确,改进教育教学模式并建立健全高校书法教育管理体制。     

Strategic and bonding effects of enhancing the student feedback process

In order to produce distinctiveness that leads to competitive advantage, higher education institutions must remain cognizant that students are co-creators. Thus, to create genuine value in educational service delivery, there is a need for a more highly developed understanding of the student-institutional intersection. The present research contributes to the marketing of higher education by developing and testing a model related to the antecedents of a broader conception of student feedback as part of student/customer orientation and co-creation. Conceived as customer feedback, student feedback to an educational institution can be positive (compliment), negative (complaint), or be an idea for an improvement to any person, or service group of the institution. Perceived ease of the feedback process and perceived usefulness, customer orientation and affective commitment are found as antecedents to intention to provide feedback. The result is a model with conceptual and managerial implications for strategically bonding students to universities.     

浅析面临挑战与机遇的美国研究型大学本科教育

存在于美国研究型大学中由来已久的教学与科研的紧张关系直接导致本科教育的削弱和水平下降。文章分别从本科教育的五项内容－－课程、学生、教学、校园文化和师资所存在的问题与应该达到要求出发，探寻了研究型大学本科教育的定位及优势；并指出了今后研究型大学本科教育的发展趋势；利用优势重构系统，树立以学生为中心的观念，走与工业企业结构、提高学生创造能力的途径。     

A co-creation shift in learning management: work design for institutional commitment and personal growth

Some higher education management departments have started to implement customer service orientation strategies in their marketing activities in order to solidify value exchange perceptions, differentiate themselves, and improve retention rates. However, if students are to get the most out of their academic experiences, they need to become meaningfully and psychologically involved in their studies. This research study explored the specific job context of students within the higher education environment by testing the structure of the “work of students” by utilizing job design theories. The ensuing conceptual Student Engagement Work Design Model (SEWDM) and the empirical findings provide a roadmap of how the engagement elements of autonomy, feedback, skill variety, task identity, and customer services can be utilized by universities when attempting to predict institutional commitment and personal growth needs. A co-creation approach to management education is definitely more complicated to promote and implement, but it has the larger payback as costs can be lowered through the careful design of the students’ work so it will be motivational—with students helping to create a better educational experience for their peers, the faculty, and the community resulting in more positive word-of-mouth promotions.     

Using SERVQUAL to Measure the Quality of the Classroom Experience

Over the last three decades, higher education institutions have found themselves using vernacular that was once chiefly found in business disciplines, such as value‐added and competitive advantage. With the rising costs of tuition, newer‐generation students are seeing themselves more and more as customers and universities are beginning to adopt customer‐centric strategies and missions. However, even with this paradigm shift, little research has been done to extend traditional service management concepts to educational settings. This research attempts to bridge this gap by applying the SERVQUAL scale, a well‐validated and widely used service operations construct, to the classroom environment. The findings show that the SERVQUAL scale exhibits both reliability and convergent and divergent validity; in fact, in these regards, it outperforms traditional student assessment scales. Moreover, the scale can explain significant amounts of variances in student‐related outcome variables such as satisfaction and learning. This innovative approach to measuring classroom service quality does indeed show that students can be viewed as customers and has far‐reaching implications to all stakeholders in the delivery of higher education.     

WHAT PISA TELLS US ABOUT THE QUALITY AND INEQUALITY OF JAPANESE EDUCATION IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE

Researchers, policy officials, and the wider public in Japan and abroad often hold different views about the quality of Japanese education. Whereas Western researchers are attracted by the academic performance of Japanese students in international assessment studies, Japanese university professors launched a public debate in 1999 about declining achievement. Both advocates and detractors, however, assume that students perform equally well or bad, teachers do not differ in their methods, and students are treated similarly across schools. This study explored the validity of the mutually opposing views about the quality of Japanese education and addressed the issue of unequal educational opportunities, which has not been investigated based on representative, large-scale datasets. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, Japanese students performed well but a decline is visible between 2003 and 2006 for mathematics. The PISA studies also indicate that an achievement gap exists in Japan and that tracking leads to differential school experiences.     

Framing the benefits of higher education participation from the perspective of non-completers

ABSTRACT

Ensuring that students of all backgrounds are smoothly transitioned through the stages of access, participation and completion in higher education has been the focus of much public policy and research in recent decades. Subsequently, public policy discourse treats those who do not complete their higher education degrees as unsuccessful, despite a lack of research considering the beneficial outcomes of non-completing students. Evidence of beneficial outcomes of higher education participation without completion has potential to challenge the deficit-centric discourse of completion dependent on a binary view of success and failure. This article details a critical discourse analysis of responses to a 2017 survey of university non-completers asked ‘were there any benefits from the time you spent doing an [sic] incomplete degree?’. This study finds that non-completers experience a wide range of benefits from incomplete studies despite the dominant discourse discounting their experiences as unsuccessful. Additionally, this study presents a critique of framing surveys of non-completing students within the normative bounds of success as completion in higher education, and instead calls for a more nuanced construction of success in higher education.     

International education and meaningful contributions to society: Exploration of postgraduate international students’ perspectives studying in a Malaysian research university

International education is sought after by students primarily for career development. However, very little is known about other meaningful educational outcomes of students pursuing international education in a Malaysian university system. This paper investigates how international students perceive their meaningful contributions to society upon study completion in one research university in Malaysia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the university with 33 international students, mainly from Nigeria, Pakistan and China. Findings show that postgraduate international students not only want to contribute to their home society through research and teaching at higher education institutions but also to their host-country and third-country communities. The analysis illustrates the interplay between macro internationalisation of higher education policies and factors shaping the micro-level experiences of international students. This study contributes new insights into vital nuances of the international educational outcomes relating to meaningful contribution to society and community development.     

Sharp focus on soft skills: a case study of Malaysian university students’ educational expectations

In 2006, the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, recommended that all public institutions of higher learning in the country incorporate soft skills formation into their curricula. This qualitative study aimed to explore Malaysian students?? expectations of university education with a special focus on the acquisition of soft skills and to examine the students?? perceptions of the instructors?? and the courses?? effectiveness in fulfilling their educational agendas. Ninety-six students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) participated in this study. The findings revealed that their educational expectations were varied and diverse and could be separated into three categories, such as ??Life Skills??, ??Subject Matter (Hard Skills)??, and ??Soft Skills??. The students considered soft skills formation as an important part of university education. However, not all of the soft skills identified by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, were mentioned by the respondents. The article discusses the implications of the study??s findings for Malaysia??s higher education policy.     

劳动抑或教育:我国高校学生助理制度的现实与反思

我国高校学生助理制度被视为兼具劳动和教育的双重功能。在这种定位之下,尽管丰富了劳动教育的内涵和功用,但是劳动功能与教育功能并未产生同步的积极效果,反而导致了教育功能的形式化和劳动用工机制扩张等现实问题,使得劳动与教育的定位相互消解,既不利于学生当前实践能力的培养,又无助于其未来的职业发展。学生助理制度在劳动教育和高校治理中具有重要的地位和作用,分析中美两国在高校用工体制、学生雇员的身份认定和薪酬待遇及其保障机制的差异,能够给我国高校学生助理在劳动和教育的实现方式上提供有力的借鉴。在当前高校学生管理和劳动用工制度的框架下,我国应当以实质内容为导向确定学生助理制度的人才培养功能,建立符合学生发展的劳动用工机制,健全学生薪酬体系及其权益保障机制,以促进高校用工和教育体制的改革。     

The Home Schooling “Market”: Results and Implications of Current Research

ABSTRACT

One of the biggest forces in primary and secondary education today is the home schooling movement–parents opting to forego sending their children to public or private schools in order to teach them themselves in their own home. As this movement grows, more and more students entering higher education will have been home schooled. This is becoming a market segment that many colleges and universities cannot afford to ignore. The current paper reviews the research which has been conducted on home schooling to answer four questions of importance to college or university officials as they contemplate targeting this group: (1) why do parents home school? (2) what are the characteristics of home schoolers? (3) would home schoolers make good college students? and (4) how could a college or university effectively reach out to home schoolers? By answering these four questions, college and university officials can better decide whether or not they should target home schooled students and, if they do, how to best reach these students.     

关于大学少年班超常教育的理性思考

少年班作为我国一种独特的超常教育形式 ,在创办的二十年里取得了显著的成就 ,但作为新生事物 ,它也受到了来自社会各方面的质疑。本文就少年班的存废问题提出了理性的思考 ,认为这种教育形式符合因材施教的教育原则和公平民主的现代教育理念 ,是非常重要和必要的 ,但鉴于少年班幼稚的一面 ,也希望大众对其发展给予支持和关心