As I made my way to my office last Thursday, I noticed an A4 poster stuck to the lift door. Then I noticed one on the wall, one on the noticeboard, and then one on my classroom door. In fact, they were stuck to nearly every available surface along the corridor. And they all had the same statement:"All I'm asking for is a little respect seeing I pay you PS9,000 a year." I still don't know what led to this flyer campaign -- it is said that it's linked to a group of students who were not given extra assignment grade for their examination -- but I could not help but become annoyed at the impolite language. I started to think about the ways that my students act and speak, and the way I acted and spoke during my time at university. I will admit that I didn't do all of the readings, and yes, I may have missed a couple of lectures throughout the year, but I completed all assignments and followed the guidelines presented to me, without expecting my lecturers to chase after me. I wish I could say the same for my students. As I walked through the car park with a colleague at the end of the day, we discussed the unrest that the posters had caused:"If you ask me,"he said,"all universities are going to need a customer services department before long."And there it was, plain and simple, the issue that I hadn't been able to explain: these young people weren't behaving like university students, they were behaving like customers. I recalled the student who told me he was disappointed with his low grade because he had"paid so much money". My colleague topped it: when one of his students was asked to leave a seminar for not completing the reading, he responded:"I pay you to teach me what's in the article, not the other way around." Last week I sent out the first round of grades for a module and had 12 emails of complaint within an hour. One in particular stood out for its misunderstanding of what it means to be a scholar. The student said the grade must be incorrect because he had turned up to all the lectures -- as if simply hoping what I had taught him deserved a 70+ grade. As I attempted to make a polite and supportive response, I considered a few things. When did it become an expectation that turning up to lectures is worthy of reward in itself? Moreover, when I was studying would I have ever had theballsto contact my lecturers and not only question their ability to grade my work appropriately but imply that my low grade was their fault? I find that as time goes by, my students become increasingly reluctant to engage in any academic behavior that does not have a direct effect on their assignment grade. That is, after all, what they are paying for. And so I am not regarded as an academic. I am not an expert in my field, a person with 10 years' worth of industry knowledge. I am a service provider. I wish I'd had the gusto to reply to those posters."Hey student -- all I'm asking for is a little respect, seeing how much you pay makes no difference to my wages, yet the level of support I am forced to offer you takes up 80% of my time in spite of the fact that teaching is still only equal to 33% of my workload. But I'll be in the office until 9 pm anyway because if I don't publish two papers by the end of the year, I'll be fired." What the author's colleague said actually implies that    .
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