CUSTOMERS ARE NUMBER ONE

 

Teaching is frustration, which leads to burnout.

Because, honestly, teaching is hard.

And because in higher education there are also things called research and service.

That’s department committees, university committees, conference papers, convention panels, books, articles, reviews and on and on and on.

A prof can’t spend all her time on teaching when there are so many other irons in fires that also must be tended.

What to do? What to do?

But here’s the deal. An institution of higher education is a place where students come to be educated by professors. No students would mean no professors. No educated students mean a less learned society. A less educated society means weaker leadership. And on and on.

Yes, the role of a professor is to do research to make a contribution to his field or to the world. And a university requires committees and meetings to operate effectively. But not at the partial expense of the students who are the very reason the university exists in the first place.

To ever say that a professor’s first and primary job is not to teach is just wrong. Administrators can attend meetings with other administrators. (Faculty can attend on a limited basis to ensure faculty governance.) Summers and evenings and weekends and the occasional weekday can be for necessary and important research. (Not for everyone, but for those profs for whom research is a part of their DNA.)

A university’s first and primary purpose is to provide the best possible education to its paying customers—the students. Because without the customers the stores will close and society will suffer.