Who are the "customers" in the education system?

TeachersNotebook

Mon, May 23 2016, 3:19 pm

The education system produces products in order to benefit some "end user." This customer can directly influence the system through its wants and needs. More importantly, everything the education system does should be tailored to the customer's needs. So who is this customer?

Is it the students? Do they really have a say in their education? Perhaps they are actually the product, not the customer?

Is it the teachers and staff? Perhaps the system has to cater to them so that they can effectively use the system to do their jobs.

Is it the management/administration? Teachers, staff, students, and even parents are always trying to please the management...

Is it the parents? Many times parents' needs, wants, and financial resources affect how the system works.

Or finally, is it the future high school, seminary, college, job, or society that the students will be living in? Perhaps the education system is part of a chain that feeds the "next step," so that next step is the customer.

I feel like this question is directly affecting an issue I'm dealing with in school. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

amother

Rose

Mon, May 23 2016, 8:45 pm

It's a great question to ponder, but I'd reframe it. Customers have the choice to buy or not, more or less, from this store or that one. In the day school system, parents are obligated to send to the schools in order to be accepted in the community. Tuition then is a community tax, aid makes it a progressive tax system. In some communities there are multiple schools to choose from, but they never compete on price - they differentiate based on haskafah and social cachet. Choose the school aligned with your shul, or be a rebel and choose the other, but you must pay the tax. The teachers and especially the highly paid administration are the government workers who strive for mediocrity. But the system is not a democracy: only the donors and the rabbonim can vote. Which of course explains the nepotism of how so many of their relatives are forever on the payroll.

Food for thought, I hope.

TeachersNotebook

Tue, May 24 2016, 2:06 am

These are great responses.

Black and Aqua: It could be that the education system is similar to the healthcare system in that there are third-party payers who are not the customers. Everyone will agree that although insurance companies pay, the patients are still the customers. In education, donors, boards, and parents may all pay. But depending on their motives, the actual customer may vary from society as a whole to students in particular.

I want to keep in mind the difference between stakeholders- many different entities who all have a say in the system- and the actual customer. Aside from having an impact on the system, the system should be striving to directly cater to the customer.

Imasoftov: I know the business-like terms seem very impersonal, but I find it helpful to use business analogies to help analyze the education system. As you seem to imply, you need to look beyond the terms and see the people and what they are doing. So when I say "product," I'm not talking about a car off an assembly line. I'm talking about something that comes out of hard work and lots of effort. When you truly define these terms, you can see how they might all apply to education.

Rose: Your comments were really insightful. I think you are probably right about the tax. But in government, citizens are considered the customers. So in your analogy, you are voting for parents as payers and customers (willing or unwilling). I would only add that in my school, the teachers and highly-paid administration (OK, I don't know how much they're paid, but I wouldn't be surprised... Smile

) are not striving for mediocrity. There's a large sense of idealism and working for a purpose.

Anyway... where would you put the students then? Are they merely products of the system, to be manipulated as the customers and stakeholders see fit?

5mom

Tue, May 24 2016, 2:46 am

As you say, the business model isn't a perfect analogy. Health care is closer, and consider the state of the healthcare industry in the US!

The true consumers are the students, but because they are children, and because they are not paying, the role of customer falls to the parents, who contract with the teachers and administration on behalf of the children.

This is not a fully free market but it's not totally restricted, either. Parents can choose other schools or communities, but not with the same ease that they can switch brands of detergent. Social pressure is hard to define and differs according to community.

I think it's up to parents to consider the end product of the schools and decide accordingly. Children are not widgets, and schools are not factories. Children come in as individuals with their own talents, challenges and family background. So the school can only have a certain amount of influence. But it's up to parents to ensure that the influences are positive, appropriate for the child, and contribute to an end product that the parents want to see.

Even in public schools, where parent payment is indirect, schools are accountable to the parents. Kal vachomer in private school.

m in Israel

Tue, May 24 2016, 3:01 am

TeachersNotebook wrote:

I think the comparison to the health care system is actually quite interesting and not far off. While it is true that technically the patients are the customers, one of the key problems in third-party payer systems is that the providers actually have much less of a need to directly cater to the customer -- and in a situation where the customer's choice is limited (such as with health insurance), there is even less of a motivation to cater to the "customer". In fact I think you can argue that while the patient certainly is the "recipient" of health services, he is not a true "customer" with the traditional power associated with that role. Insurance companies have much more control over an individual's health care options than the patients. The patients control in essence comes from the fact that they are the costumers of the insurance company -- so assuming a certain amount of free market dynamics in the purchasing of health insurance, the health insurance companies have to at least in some way cater to their customers. IOW, I would say the insurance companies are the "customers" of the health care providers, and the patients are the "customers" of the insurance companies.

Similarly, I think the "customers" of the education system are those paying for it -- donors and tuition paying parents. I don't think the students are the customers at all, as they generally are not the ones determining whether or not to "purchase" the service. The teachers and staff are the employees, not the customer. Every business must "cater" to their employees to some extent -- that doesn't make them customers. As far as the "next step" goes, they are not the customers -- that is in a certain sense the "product". IOW the next step is only important because the "customers" (I.e. parents and supporters) EVALUATE the "product" based on what happens next -- where kids get accepted, how they do in whatever places they go, etc. So success at the "next step" is the product that the customer is hoping to buy -- doing well in that category is analogous to producing a good product. Of course the product "specs" are important to pay attention to -- but that doesn't make them the customer.

I guess what I'm trying to say in this long about post is that you are completely right in that there are many players in the educational system -- just as there are many factors in a business. The customer is not the only one who plays a role in determining outcome -- although ideally their needs should be primary.

DrMom

Tue, May 24 2016, 4:43 am

I think any govt-mandated "business" (healthcare, education, etc.) is subject to different rules than those normally governing businesses operating under the laws of free enterprise.

In the education business, you have a range of "customers." Students, parents (who are the ones who actually pay the bills) are supposed to be the customers. But of course, administrators and teacher unions (at least in the public school system), have a huge influence on public policy governing the education industry. Most attempts at serious educational reforms in the public sector have been stymied by teacher unions. In the frum educational system, mediocrity is allowed to flourish due to social pressures exerted by rabbanim (Want to start a new school? Your children will be never get married, your family will be shunned). These forces interfere with free market forces which would normally push people to leave lousy schools for better ones.

amother

Rose

Tue, May 24 2016, 8:00 pm

I would say the service provided is education and indoctrination of the students, so the students are the object being fixed.

The analogy to health insurance works well: the government/community forces you to buy it, most people (but far from all) are better off with it, there are few licensed providers, there are lots of overarching regulations/customs including the requirement to take unprofitable "customers," most people dislike the providers and are sure they are overcharged, oh and the yeshivas/health insurers have no incentive not to treat "customers" poorly because they have few if any other choices. And with compensation, teachers like doctors resent that their incomes are squeezed by those running the insurers/schools, while those CEOs and heads of school take big salaries.

The key difference is that most employee are oblivious to the true cost of health insurance bought by their employer, which is often many times the employee contribution. And that explains why insurers have no reason to accommodate the insured - the true customers, paying the bills, are the employers. With tuition everyone knows the rack rate and many pay it. We may think it inflated to cover scholarships or subsidised by donors, but it is a representative number and it is paid by many customers, leaving us to ponder other ways to explain schools' behavior.