Meet Their Needs to Meet Your Mission

A colleague shared this article on LinkedIn, and it reminded me of a time when the college where we both teach had some new buildings. The Physical Plant folks, if I remember correctly, wisely waited to install sidewalks. They first observed where the worn grass indicated that people naturally walked, and then put sidewalks there.

Too often planners install sidewalks where they think it makes sense, and pedestrians with other ideas will take their own paths, leaving worn trails regardless of "keep off the grass" signs.

As Matt Reed points out, students make their own path in scheduling. It just makes sense to offer people what they indicate they want rather what we think they should want.

In a college environment, that only goes so far. Students seldom know what they actually need in higher education, and I'm afraid we who are serving them don't do a good job of helping them understand what college is for. Of course, students come to us hoping to prepare for a job, but jobs come as a side effect of college. Higher education has always been designed to affect the way a student thinks. We're trying to help a student learn how to learn, how to solve problems, how to pick the right problem, how to work with other people, how to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity while pursuing a worthwhile goal—in other words, how to become a more effectively functioning human being (and document that fact). That's why employers value a college degree.

A doctor who tells a patient only what they want to hear wouldn't be a very good doctor. We have a responsibility in that area to remain professional. Of course, a patient can always decide to leave a particular doctor behind, so a doctor who wants to serve patients must learn to explain her professional conclusions in such a way as to get the patient to hear her. College professionals must do the same.

But where it's not about compromising professional guidance, thereby negating the whole reason for college, it just make sense: listen to the student and meet their needs, so we can meet our own need to continue serving students.