All Answers: [pakgrid] Students as Customers

After conducting some teaching sessions related to engineering at a renowned education institute in Pakistan, a thought came to me regarding our education and I would like to share with all Pakistanis giving a factual but not realized concept.

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Any customer pays cash to get the required services or to fulfill a need! We are certain about what we want when we pay against it, except for EDUCATION. For example, as customer of bread, you see a need of your hunger being satisfied. When we ask someone why your are paying for education, the most common answer is to become something (kuch bannay k liye). This is an alarming situation! Can you imagine yourself paying for something when you do not know what you want to gain? Such is the pattern of all society!
Our society is lacking vision of what we want to become and where to find our required educational services! Due to which following issues hair raising issues are highlighted:

1. As an engineering teacher, when I asked a student why are you learning to make a drawing. The answer was "To get a good grade!" Then I again asked, AS AN ENGIINEER why are you learning to make a drawing? Only then there were some relevant answers. The problem is we take an admission in a "WELL KNOWN INSTITUTE" to fulfill our ego and to tell other relatives and friends that we are paying for BRAND. Secondly, our vision is then limited to good grade, when we don't find good teaching services, what do we do? Do we demand that our educational needs are not being satisfied, i.e. we are not a happy customer? Do we leave the institute to get these services in a "LOW PROFILE INSTITUTE", where your educational needs will be BETTER satisfied? NOT AT ALL! WE GO FOR TUITION! No joking, this I experienced at University Level!

2. Then I also asked what is the function of an engineer? A response was to repair a fault in a plant. I was not surprised to hear because our engineers are not designing product in Pakistan. This clearly shows that we do not know why we are spending huge amounts in EDUCATION. Moreover, the module of engineering design is not present in most of our engineering syllabi.

3. Not only this, we pay as customers for our education and rather we evaluate them we are being evaluated! Students are the most enslaved pupils here because they cannot say anything against a teacher or institute even if he/she is not being provided good teaching service for what he is paying. Because I do anything, my grade will be damaged! Is that what we pay for?

4. Let me explain our grading system through an example. If you are running a factory and you bought a machine to give you required pieces of production per day. After purchasing you found that your new machine is not providing you your targeted number of pieces as falsely claimed, you lose your interest in it and search for a better alternative machine that satisfies your production quantity. Similarly, when the student is not getting for what he wants, his motivation and performance will be low and as a result he gets a BAD GRADE!

As engineers we must get out of thinking to get a job in a multinational and repairing their faults but start real engineering products that fulfill the need of the society. Especially, I request all mechanical engineers because they are the backbone of product design, although few are being produced. There are numerous simple problems to convert into opportunities solve: there are no juicers or blenders being designed, no generators being designed, no Computers and its accessories being designed. The list goes on and on and on... The thing I want to address here is that the market is huge. It's only the people who have to produce.

One thing that may also common to hear, who will compete with CHINA (CHEEN se compete kon karay ga!) You must realize that in order to ship a product to a market it requires transportation which adds to the cost price. If someone is not producing it locally then of course people of that locality will purchase the product at a higher price from abroad! Realizing of lack of interest in this regard, the move their factories towards mass production because the higher the volume of production, the lower the cost per unit labour. That's why the entire world is moving towards automation.

Students (Especially engineering students) must realize that they are CUSTOMERS! Your payment to today is an investment for tomorrow! One invests to get more return and we must think from this angle, i.e. we are paying to achieve our future goals and in return earn more. We must know what they want to achieve (in case of engineering, we must know what we want to design) and to search and get the required service available to fulfill our aims. Setting your aim is the most important criteria before you get your education because this will be important to fulfill your dream. If you are not satisfied with the performance of an institute tell them politely. Even if not improved, you have all the right to get it from some other place and leave that place.

The teachers must also realize that they are the representatives of that organization and they are working to provide the quality of service that the customer (here students) are expecting and help them to fulfill their dreams.
We need to work out on our visions on urgent basis! Inshallah my thought sharing will improve our goal settings and basic but paramount educational services!

Regards
Sulaiman Dawood Barry