This was my first time attending the BLSCI Annual Symposium. I was pleasantly surprised, like David, that the business and the academic communities were so in step and eager to work together and learn from each other. During the roundtable discussion, my group came to a realization that many college students see themselves solely as consumers and that this self-identification was adversely affecting their ability to communicate themselves clearly and with self-awareness to others, including employers. Outside of school, they buy things, they want things, and they have never been taught to rethink those desires, or fulfill their desires by means other than straightforward consumption. This habit of consumption transfers directly to their attitude toward school: they buy course credits and want satisfaction in return. But what is the satisfaction they expect from the purchase of a college education?
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My group discussed the possibility that since students are not being taught to leave behind a consumer mentality, they never learn to produce anything themselves that they feel control over, and are therefore inevitably left unsatisfied by their consumption (one always is!). They check RateMyProfessor, sign up for a course as if they were buying a new phone they had researched in the Consumer Reports, and expect it to do what they wanted it to do: give them a goodish grade, repeat, repeat, diploma.
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The transition, after graduation, or during job interviews, or on the new job, is a difficult one because they are suddenly being asked to become producers: of a product, of an idea, of a report. According to many who are receiving these students into their businesses, they are not self-aware about what they are being asked to do. They are not producing the kind of work that is expected. They are not accustomed to being mature, thoughtful producers, probably because we, as a culture, never asked them to be.
By verbalizing this goal–that students need to learn to be producers of knowledge and self-awareness and need to learn to put aside or even shun the culture of consumption–I felt like our group was being rather bold, but I have to say it didn’t even feel radical, despite its being communicated in a group as mixed as mine was, with educators in English, Marketing, Psychology, and Business, and business people with diverse backgrounds in advertising, media, and strategy. Free writing in the afternoon with Peter Elbow, surrounded by this group of educators and business people, was a dream.
