Comments on: lean math departments?

By: david carlton

david carlton — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:36:30 +0000

Thanks for the references! For what it’s worth, I’m a big Alfie Kohn fan.

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:45:22 +0000

I think it is helpful to think of students as customers for some improvement efforts. In some cases you may find it helpful to think of the future student as the customer. What will the student 10 years from now find worthwhile – that might not be the same thing as what they want today. David Langford and Alfie Kohn have some good thoughts on this area. There is a Lean Education Academic Network http://www.teachinglean.org/ which might also have interesting thoughts…

By: david carlton

david carlton — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:40:58 +0000

I think expecting to find non-conflicting goals in a system as complex as a university is extraordinarily optimistic.

Yeah. Also, to be clear: as a first approximation, when it come to teaching, I don’t care about the professors’ goals: schools are way too far over on the paternalistic side in my opinion. But even if we temporarily assume that we care only about customer goals and that customer = student, there will be a lot of conflicts there.

Which is fun! And increases my optimism about the possibility that lean thinking might help: they have some practice in surfacing real problems and dealing with those productively.

(Of course, I’m ignoring the fact that I’m contradicting my previous conflict. I guess my vague thought there was that the goals of funding agencies (including parents) don’t conflict all that much with the goals of students, though I now agree that there are lots of conflicts within the latter set of goals. And it’s quite possible that that earlier vague thought is completely bogus.)

When it comes to the university as a whole, I mostly despair, but I don’t think I feel like writing about that in this comment thread…

By: Joe Pallas

Joe Pallas — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:49:14 +0000

One professor in Stanford’s CS department said the goal of the department’s PhD program was “to produce more people like us.” He meant people trained and qualified to teach graduate students and do research. But I think that not all his colleagues agreed; many felt a basic conflict between teaching and research. No one could deny that a substantial number of the graduates did not go into academia, while at the same time many felt that those who did were not being adequately prepared.

I think expecting to find non-conflicting goals in a system as complex as a university is extraordinarily optimistic.

By: david carlton

david carlton — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:10:25 +0000

I would say that students are both raw materials and customers. One difference with the chicken farm is that the chicken farming isn’t done for the chickens’ benefit; education happens for the students’ benefit. (I don’t want to minimize broader societal goals, but the students are the focus of the benefit.) They’re also frequently customers in the sense of the person paying for the education.

Having said all that, they’re a pretty funny sort of customer. And they’re frequently not the person paying for the education, in part or at times in whole. I guess it would be useful to start from the desired end products, looking at it from the point of view of various parties (students, other people paying for the education (including, say, taxpayers), but not professors) and focusing on whether we’re efficiently meeting those goals. If different parties’ goals conflict, then it matters whom we think of as the real customer; if they don’t, then it doesn’t matter. My guess is that, to some extent, they will, but, to a larger extent, they won’t.

Hmm, if a parent buys a book or an iPod (or a car!) at a child’s request, who is the real customer there? Of course, the raw material aspect of a school doesn’t arise in that context.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:21:43 +0000

“A theorem is a funny sort of customer” is now the title of my autobiography.

Will read this and make a real comment later, I’ve got to get the boy some breakfast….

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:45:34 +0000

Students are not, and never have been until extremely recent years, the customers of a university. They are raw materials. Thinking they are customers is on all fours with thinking that a chicken farm’s customers are the chickens, just because they get fed and taken care of. (I’ve used this analogy a lot with respect to TV — the audience for TV are not its customers either.)

It’s far from clear to me who the customers of a university really are. I’m not even sure the question makes sense (but I agree that it’s interesting to explore it). Who are the “customers” of a nuclear family?