From Collegial to Commercial: Student attitudes around the world

As a student, I have experienced three public higher education systems in three very different countries: Czechia, Indonesia, and the Netherlands. In aggregate, I liked the Dutch system by far the best, although there is one aspect of education that I think the non-Western countries do better: the student-lecturer relationship.

The Netherlands

Especially in recent years, I feel the attitude of students in the Netherlands is becoming somewhat consumerist. They increasingly view education as a service to be purchased, expecting tangible returns on their investment. Rather than doing the hard work of studying, students may demand convenience and flexibility, use formal grievance procedures, and be vocal about having their wishes accommodated. While I believe it can be tremendously helpful to think of higher education as a public service, I believe that students learn less, staff work more, and public money is not spent wisely when students act as customers and institutions treat them that way.

On the other hand, the student-lecturer relationships in both Indonesia and Czechia, although very different from one other, feel less business-like and more communal than in the Netherlands.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, the student-lecturer relationship resembles one of a disciple and a master. The lecturer often acts as the proverbial sage on the stage. They know best what is good for students. The power distance is so large, that it is the lecturer's call when a lecture begins and ends, sometimes deviating from the scheduled times by an hour - and students are fine with that. The main pedagogical benefit of such an arrangement, I think, is that students study more diligently, wanting to make the most use of the limited-time access to a "master", and prove themselves to them.

Czechia

In Czechia, on the other hand, the relationship between students and lecturers is rather collegial. Once a student reaches the second year of a bachelor program, lecturers start referring to and addressing them as colleagues. (Note: The Czech language is quite formal, so addressing to someone as "Dear colleague Basbas" is common in academia.) By assigning students an identity of members of the scholarly community, I suspect it makes them feel like stewards of knowledge, of institutional values and academic integrity, benefitting, among other things, their own learning.

Disclaimers and Summary

I admit I grossly oversimplified and generalized the student-lecturer relationships, in order to lead us to the following point:

Learning is like physical exercise. It is hard. It requires you to work. And no amount of money or consumerist attitude can buy you results. As gym bros say, No Pain No Gain.

If higher education institutions are unhappy with how the educational culture is evolving, it is them who need to act. There are a few ideas I liked in this conversation with ChatGPT.

This post and image were created with the help of ChatGPT Plus.