(Continuing the discussion of Who are our customers for education? I. The employer as customer.)
"Society" has traditionally been a major "customer" of higher education. At different times and places, higher education has been called on by society to do such diverse things as help create and/or maintain national identity, display national cultural and intellectual excellence, create societal mobility, preserve the societal status quo, contribute to economic growth and improved living conditions, fend off and counteract foreign ideas and influences, and provide critical expertise in times of war. Thus, the expectations of society as customer have and will vary according to time and place. In return for meeting these expectations, higher education (at least the non-profit side) generally has been well rewarded by society. Much of higher education globally traditionally has been run by the state, and thus received the great majority of its support from the state. Private non-profit institutions have received de facto state support through tax breaks of a variety of types, and are typically eligible for some types and levels of state support. Thus, the challenge is not to determine whether or not society is one of the customers of higher education- it is - but to define in this rapidly changing and globalizing world what "society" is, and what it expects (and will expect) of higher education. Further complicating the issue is that "society" has many levels, ranging from governmental structures at one end of organizational complexity to individuals at the other, and the relationships between these, and intervening, levels is also changing rapidly.
At one time, for higher education in the United States, "society" was that of the United States and its citizens, and higher education needed to be sure it was meeting the expectations and needs of that well defined society. For example, when Vannevar Bush in 1945 talked of the role of universities in creating the "intellectual capital"(people and ideas) that enabled the United States and its allies to triumph in WWII, he was focused on what higher education could do for the future health and welfare of the United States and its citizens. He could not have imagined the trends of globalization that have spread the fruits of American intellectual capital around the world, enriching and strengthening not only us and our friends, but also those not allied with us. He could not have predicted that American higher education would become an enormous magnet for the best students around the world. Most of those students stayed in the US after graduation to help create American intellectual capital and drive the entrepreneurial growth of the American economy, but many returned to their home countries thus increasing the intellectual capital of their own countries. The ideas and inventions that are another key part of the intellectual output of American higher education now are available around the world at the speed of the internet, and provide special benefits to the US only to the extent that our other organizations (government, industry) are able to move more quickly and effectively to exploit them than are similar groups in other countries. Thus, the relationship of American higher education to both American society and other societies in the world has changed in significant ways from what Vannevar Bush would have imagined, and more changes are almost certainly to occur in short order.
Many countries or regions have been rather explicit in their expectations for their institutions of higher education in this new era. For example, the European countries of the Bologna region have described their expectations thusly: "A Europe of Knowledge is now widely recognized as an irreplaceable factor for social and human growth and as an indispensable component to consolidate and enrich the European citizenship, capable of giving its citizens the necessary competencies to face the challenges of the new millennium, together with an awareness of shared values and belonging to a common social and cultural space....The vitality and efficiency of any civilisation can be measured by the appeal that its culture has for other countries. We need to ensure that the European higher education system acquires a word-wide degree of attraction equal to our extraordinary cultural and scientific traditions." Thus the new educational programs envisaged by the Bologna accord are to be an indispensable part of the "glue" that creates the new European citizenship. In addition, higher education in the Bologna area should serve to display the high scientific and cultural accomplishments of the region, thus attracting the best students from around the world.
America has been much less formal than many other countries in its articulation of what is expected of its institutions in this new era. Because of the heterogeneity and highly dispersed power structure of the US, it is not surprising that there is little articulated national policy describing expectations for higher education , but it does make it more difficult to divine the expectations of the societal customer.
There has been a clear transition from the "education as a societal good" view expressed by Vannevar Bush, to the view that education is primarily a personal benefit, thus narrowing to some extent the expectations society might place on education. A 2003 survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education showed that the public's two highest goals for higher education were very much in the personal benefit column: preparing undergraduates for a career, and providing education to adults so that they can get a better job. Societal good roles ranked much less highly with the respondents. Only a slight majority favored "discover more about the world through research", and a only bit over 1/3 emphasized a university role in creating jobs and economic development. The same survey concluded that 2/3 of Americans believe students and their families - not the government- should pay the largest share of the cost of higher education, thus reconfirming the view that the respondents consider higher education to be a private rather than societal benefit. This represents a 180 degree shift from the survey results of the 1960's. This individual level statement of societal expectations has certainly been felt at the governmental level, and one sees there as well an increasing view that higher education is a private rather than public good. However, government generally still emphasizes the role of universities in creating jobs and economic development more than do individuals. This probably reflects the changing role of government in the transition from Nation-State to Market- State. The same transition explains the increasing societal expectations at all levels regarding increased access to, and accountability of, higher education ( Price and Cost in Higher Education: price and the political-economic system , Jan.11, 2007).
Left unanswered, however, are a number of important questions that ultimately will have to be addressed at higher political levels. Two of these might be, for example: Is higher education part of the global soft power of the United States, and if so, what does society expect us to accomplish?; What is to be our role in the evolution of American society, e.g. in creating equal opportunity for people of all races and socio-economic origins, encouraging responsible citizenship, and building understanding of shared values?
As noted above, American higher education has already had an indirect influence on other countries and other societies through returning students and widespread dissemination of the intellectual products of our institutions of higher education. Many institutions of higher education now are beginning to explore what their more direct roles might be with respect to other societies. They are, for example, setting up campuses abroad for the explicit purpose of educating non-American students. These new campuses are often in direct partnership with a foreign government. This new step in academic globalization raises some very important issues.
"American" corporations are, of course, generally no longer focused exclusively on the American market and workforce. They have become global in reach and ownership. Despite this, their American "society as customer" still has some expectations regarding how these corporations will operate in other countries. American society has generally accepted that American corporations will need to meet the societal expectations of the countries in which they are producing and selling, even if these expectations are not exactly the same as those in the US. However, there are some American societal expectations of corporate behavior that have been extended by law to the foreign operations of US corporations, such as prohibitions on the use of bribery to gain market, even though these practices may be common in some of the countries in which our corporations are working. As Yahoo has found in China, American society has expectations that media companies will adhere to American standards of free speech and confidentiality even when it conflicts with local rules. And clearly, there is a societal push-back when American corporations do things which are perceived by many to harm our own economy, such as offshoring. Thus our societal expectations for offshore operations of US corporations are created using a somewhat complex mix of American and local standards.
Higher education, even viewed as an industry, is not like other industries simply because of the historic importance of its societal role, as noted above. Thus the expectations American society will have for the education offered by American institutions of higher education working on foreign campuses are likely to be more complex than for corporations generally. Will we be expected to carry with us generally (but not universally, even in the US) shared educational values such as equality of the sexes, and the importance of open inquiry, free discussion, and questioning of authority? Should we participate in higher education in countries where faculty and students of certain religious and ethnic backgrounds are not made welcome? Should we or should we not be providing top flight education to students in countries that are becoming major commercial competitors to the US? Are there subjects that we should not be teaching in some foreign countries? Fortunately, there is some guidance on this last question, since the US government has declared certain subjects (e.g. nuclear engineering) off limits to many foreign national students and researchers. For these and a host of other similar questions, there may be different answers from American society as customer, and the host society of the foreign campus as customer. Understanding and accommodating these conflicting societal expectations will become an increasingly important challenge as more US institutions of higher education move some of their teaching offshore.
Higher education plays a large and varied, positive role in a multitude of aspects of a society, and in return, is well rewarded by society. It is important, therefore, that we consider society to be a customer whose interests, concerns, and expectations must be understood if we are to continue and improve this powerful synergistic relationship. Changing conditions will causing changing expectations, however, and higher education must constantly seek to understand the nature of those changing expectations in order to continue to play a major role in shaping the changes.
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