by Gina Stassinos,
Pharm.D., Clinical Toxicology Fellow, Maryland Poison Center and University of
Maryland School of Pharmacy
Recently, I took advantage of Maryland’s tax free
week and bought myself a few clothes. I wasn’t entirely sure of a few
purchases. So I asked about the return
policy. Indeed, I later discovered that some things didn’t fit me well. Economic exchanges can be a risk, especially
large economic exchanges. What if that product being purchased was an
education? A professor at a graduation ceremony once told the class that,
unlike other things that can be lost, an education can’t be taken away from
you. An education may be the single best investment anyone can make. But I’ve heard some graduates say they would
not make the same decision to pursue pharmacy as a career path or enroll in a
specific program or school if they could do it over. Indeed, this question was
included on the Pharmacy Alumni Survey distributed by the American Association
of Colleges of Pharmacy and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education.
It is difficult to believe that the value of an
education could be in disputed. Like the dress sitting in my closet, some
people haven’t gotten much use out of their degree. Some degrees are tied to a specific set of
skills that have perceived value in the marketplace. But if the necessary skill
set changes or demand shifts, the anticipated return on investment will be
diminished or lost. There are also people who enroll in a specific school only
to find the culture isn’t a good fit for them. Lastly, educational value can be viewed from a
quality standpoint. Teachers and schools today are ranked and evaluated based
on numerous parameters.
These “value” propositions often espouse an ideology
that view students as consumers — consumers entitled to a quality produce at a
reasonable (competitive) price. Students
(the consumers) are not accountable for the quality of the product. Rather, an education is something to be
purchased and it is a means to employment. Academic entitlement is a term used to
describe the tendency of students to expect academic success without taking
personal responsibility for achieving the success. Entitled behaviors include
being overly critical of instructors, contesting grades, demanding
accommodations, and arriving late to class.1 A number of causes have been identified. The millennial generation has been described
as coddled narcissists. There has been a
rise in the number of market-driven degree programs and for-profit educational
institutions. Moreover, consumerism —
societal trends to acquire ever increasing amounts of goods and services as
well as to protect consumers against useless, inferior, or dangerous products —
has become pervasive.2 Several negative consequences of academic
entitlement and student consumerism have been described. The rigorousness of instruction
and school-wide morale are reduced when professors must cater to student desires and are
pressured to make the “numbers look good” by inflating grades. When the student is a consumer, teachers and
schools are more apt to tolerate unprofessional behaviors. In the end, more graduates may be
unemployable because they lack the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed.
Are students today really entitled narcissists? Academic
entitlement is certainly not new. It has
been described as early as 1986.3
A study conducted at Roseman University of Health Sciences attempted to
develop an objective and measurable way to identify individuals who are “academically
entitled.” They found that only 10% of
their graduating students (14 out of 141) were “academically entitled” based on
the criteria they developed.2
In the end, the authors concluded that there is a lack of empirical data
about whether academic entitlement is a growing problem.
Let’s look at student consumerism using a different
variable – the cost of education. A study comparing national data regarding
pharmacy and other health care professions found that pharmacy students’ total
debt increased 23% over the last 5 years compared to 4.7% for dental and 8.5%
for medical students. It also found that the return on investment expressed as
a ratio of average salary to indebtedness was now below 1.0 and the number of
pharmacy positions in the United States is no longer increasing.4 The
authors concluded that institutions were shifting are greater cost burden to
students. It could be that students are painfully aware of their degree of
indebtedness and as cost increases so do their expectations.
What is the solution to student consumerism and risky
educational investments? Many have proposed to decrease tuition, increase
government regulation, or decrease the number of graduates. In reality, controlling the ebb and flow of an
economy isn’t easy. Centrally controlled
economies (think the old Soviet Union and Eastern Block countries!) don’t have
a particularly good track record. Most
agree that an undue cost burden should not be placed on students as this fuels
consumerism. Some experts believe that academic entitlement in health
professional education can be combatted by rightfully acknowledging that the
patient is the consumer (not the student).5
Instructors should be prepared to face entitled
students by increasing their awareness of the issues and cautiously considering
student demands, and designing assessments that reinforce student
accountability.1
References
- Cain J, Romanelli F, Smith KM. Academic Entitlement in Pharmacy Education. Am J Pharm Educ 2012; 76: Article 189.
- Jeffres M, Barclay SM, Stolte SK. Academic Entitlement and Academic Performance in Graduating Pharmacy Students. Am J Pharm Educ 2014; 78: Article 116.
- Dubovsky SL. Coping with entitlement in medical education. N Engl J Med. 1986;315:1672–1674
- Cain J, Campbell T, Cogndon HB, et al. Pharmacy Student Debt and Return on Investment of a Pharmacy Education. Am J Pharm Educ 2014; 78: Article 5.
- Holdford DA. Is a Pharmacy Student the Consumer or the Product? Am J Pharm Educ 2014; 78: Article 3.
- Cain J, Noel Z, Smith KM, Romanelli F. Four Rights of the Pharmacy Educational Consumer. Am J Pharm Educ 2014; 78: Article 115.
- Fazlagic A. Measuring the intellectual capital of a university. Paper presented at: Conference on trends in the management of human resources in higher education; 2005 Aug 25-26; Paris, France.
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