Education is like Gym Membership
We were talking today with some senior members of Blackboard’s sales team- Brett Frazier and Tony Shepherd. The discussion turned to the concept of the “student as consumer” and the impact of increased fees. Prof Liz Burd came up with a great analogy that she uses when talking to first year Computer Science students. She suggests they think about University education as being like gym membership. Just because you’ve joined the gym, it doesn’t mean you get/stay fit. That requires some work on their part. You can take this analogy as far as you want – the University provides the equipment (the learning environment) and the personal trainers (the staff, academic, pastoral and support) and should provide you with progress updates (feedback). Together the student and the personal trainer work out the best programme for you (module choices). It’s not one I’d heard before but it makes a lot of sense and uses vocabulary that doesn’t sound overly consumerist. I think it is worthy of a wider audience 
