Letter to the Editor

Editor:

In his article in the January 1996 CRN, "Criticism of Undergrad Curricula Justified," Peter Denning tells computer science faculty to view employers and students as their customers. While the suggestion is apt, I wish Denning had explored further the multiple and conflicting demands from these customer classes.

As Denning says, employers seek competence in the graduates they hire. But what is the nature of that competence? Where computer science faculty would emphasize competence in fundamental principles, many employers would like students to have extensive experience with a particular program or system.

Employer-customers may present a mixed bag of demands, but the demands from student-customers vary much more widely. Students differ greatly in the energy, enthusiasm, independence, talents and time they bring to learning. Of particular concern to this topic is the pernicious yet common misconception among students that their grades should be proportional to effort expended rather than to results achieved or competence demonstrated. One can only imagine the mismatch in expectations they will encounter with their first employers.

Faculty members teach at the nexus between employer-customers and student-customers, yet the teacher-effectiveness training mentioned by Denning often is concerned exclusively with student-customers. Such programs can place tremendous responsibility on teachers to vary their teaching to stimulate different input-processing modalities, accommodate each student's individual learning style, devise empowerment strategies that ensure success for all and warm up a chilly classroom atmosphere. After all this work, if students do not succeed, the programs may suggest that the assessment strategy was insufficiently authentic. Notable by their absence are descriptions of students' responsibilities or of requirements for competence in subject material.

In no way do I intend to denigrate all aspects of training in teaching effectiveness. Indeed, after I leave a workshop or finish reading about teaching and learning, I almost always have some new ideas and more food for thought. Still, I would welcome material on teaching that presents a more balanced view of the need of student-customers for good teaching and the need of both faculty and employer-customers to preserve high scientific content.

Christopher J. Van Wyk

Dept. of Mathematics & Computer Science

Drew University

Denning Replies:

I am heartened that Professor Van Wyk accepts the notion of students as customers and proposes the questions that we need to explore to sort out the complexities in practice. His questions about the nature of competence and the expectations of students and employers go right to the heart of the criticisms directed at us as educators.

The essence of the customer-performer relationship is that the performer makes a promise to deliver to the customer the conditions of satisfaction agreed to between them. The key word here is "promise." Most of our catalogs promise students preparation for their chosen professions, a timely and relevant curriculum, a knowledgeable faculty, a state-of-the-art research program and opportunities for a good job. These are broad promises that raise expectations in the minds of students and employers that we are not meeting.

Most students think that these promises mean: 1) they will gain the necessary competencies in action and habits of mind that are widely expected of entry-level professionals; 2) most of the subject matter will be related to emerging trends and every program maintains a regular planning process to track trends; 3) the research program and research faculty will be accessible to undergraduates; 4) getting a job will be fairly certain on graduation; and 5) getting individualized advice on demand will be easy. Every difference in expectations among students, parents and employers on the one side and faculty on the other is a surefire recipe for a dissatisfied customer.

How many of us as faculty have the same understanding as our students of what we are promising? How many of us can tell students exactly what they will be competent at on graduation? How do we--and they--know whether we have delivered these competencies? How many of us regularly get feedback from students, parents and employers about their expectations of our programs? When we do get the feedback, do we act on it? How many of us are ready to be judged for promotion, tenure and raises on the basis of the results produced by our students?

I gave preliminary answers to these questions in "Educating a New Engineer" (Communications of the ACM, December 1992), and I accept Van Wyk's challenge to put together a deeper essay on this topic.