Max S. asks a very good question: >>If students who pay for some type of education are not customers, what are they? Suckers?<< Strictly speaking, suckers are a kind of customer, so they could be both. In fact, I think that many of them are both. The point is that students are supposed to be _more than_ customers (or suckers). At least in terms of its official rhetoric, the university is supposed to be a community, where the students not only "receive services" from the university but also help create the university as an organization, contributing more than money to that community. The university (ideally) is supposed to help the students make such contributions. The darker side is that students are also often treated as children, with the university acting as a substitute parent. I think that one of Jane Smiley's points is that at Moo University (and similar large universities), the students are treated like mere customers. The bizaare Dr. Guest is simply making explicit what the university administration wishes would remain implicit, the atomization of community life. I guess this is better than the approach summarized by a 1960s pamphlet that I never read, "The Student as Nigger," which seems an overreaction to university paternalism. sheet! I wasn't going to post any more to pen-l today. But it's lunch time... in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
