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On 14 Nov 2016, at 9:08, J Pritchard wrote: > In the UK I see that we are positioning students as customers of HE > (well government is) - out of interest why aren't we thinking of a > membership relationship, akin to the joining a gym? This in my mind > would be a much healthier partnership approach that recognises a > commitment on all sides. After mulling this one over for ages and seeing various metaphors, I've come to the conclusion we need to take this much more seriously than we do;) My worry about the gym one is that it implies firstly that the activities are meaningless in themselves (ie we are saying that *only* transferable skills are worth anything). There's also the overtone of one of the areas of modern life that are most likely to charge you a fortune for trying to cancel membership;) And it gets nowhere near the idea that education is transformative. But it *is* a good response to any claim that someone can 'buy' a degree. Having run focus groups with undergraduates, I've been struck by how rarely they invoke the consumer model; when they do (in my limited experience), it's almost like a last resort as a protest about something they feel powerless about: they are clutching at straws and often indicate it is not a metaphor they would choose, it's one that's been handed to them. So here's a harder question: why and when would we want to describe university education metaphorically? What is the conversation we are in, exactly? I see staff describe students as consumers far more than students themselves, for instance, and when they are worrying about the future more generally. The fact that no single metaphor has commanded wide consent makes me think we should make an effort to *avoid* using metaphors where possible (and certainly as an 'answer') and focus on describing the aspects we think are important in any given context, which will vary. They are customers in the sense that they should be able to expect certain things that have been promised (access to libraries, teaching, facilities etc); it is like a gym in the sense that they have to work at it but it's like living abroad in the sense that they will see a completely unexpected range of things done differently, and be changed by it (and so on). It's like staying with family in the sense that we have an authority and an implied loyalty to them (let's not pretend -- we are marking their stuff and they never forget it). And so on. But the danger is that we never communicate what we value about university teaching, which is very hard to describe (thus the temptation to use metaphors) and then we wonder why other people don't see it as valuable. I would say we need to stop trying to 'nail' this one and focus on the undercurrents of any given communication, and take the opportunities to say something much more meaningful about university education, because it *is* a big deal, not something to be squashed into a metaphor. Metaphors should travel both ways: a ball is a bit like a balloon, and a balloon is a bit like a ball. If someone asked what a gym was like, we would describe it pretty literally. We wouldn't say 'it's a bit like being a student but for your muscles and aerobic system'. All of which says (to me) we should go round in a circle and think about an almost Zen logic, and talk about 'students', not 'consumers' or 'customers'. They're our *students* and evading that seems to almost say we are ashamed of it and it's not a meaningful word in itself. And we then clarify that 'student' includes aspect of partnership, aspects of their-handing-over-money and so on. cheers Jason