Page 31 - Looking_after_school

1. Today's discourse: why should the student be at the center of education?

The indications of Pine and Gilmore about how organising the experi-
ence economy are guiding principles. The authors claim that experi-
ences lead to transformations and that fees should be charged for “the
demonstrated outcomes that result from the underlying experiences”
(p. xvi):

“And colleges and universities, which graduate barely half those who
enrol (would we ever tolerate such dismal performance from any other
industry?), should focus on the actual educational, personal, and societal
outcomes achieved, collecting all or part of the tuition only when those
outcomes become clear at graduation and beyond. To do otherwise, in
each of these fields, does a disservice to all.” (2011, p. xvii)

From this perspective, education is not simply a service which takes
the needs of the customer into account as quality indicators. Education
here is a service in which funding is based on the successful experi-
ence of a concrete student. Not only are the needs of the student of
central importance, but also experience, and the actual transforma-
tions which result from this experience.
This focus on customer experience and personal transformation
implies another view on how the public sector should be organised.
The line of argumentation goes as follows: a personalised service is
only possible if the customer becomes co-producer and (preferably)
co-funder of the service. This means that the customer, which in our
case would be the learner, has a part to play in the development of
the service from the very onset. In the framework of public service,
personalisation should not merely benefit the quality of that service
but also, as Hartley stresses in his critical study, implies cuts:

“That is to say, the perceived need to reduce public-sector expenditure
in response to economic globalisation requires an anticipatory rhetoric
which will prepare the ‘consumer’ to be as much a co-funder as a co-
producer of services. The notions of co-producer and (less prominently
stated) of co-funder are central to a policy which seeks to manage public
expenditure. So, a new mode of regulation is being sought, one that can
purportedly ‘deliver’ excellence whilst at the same time resonate with the
culture of consumerism and ‘enjoyment’.” (Hartley, 2007, p. 634)

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