Students Are Customers
We need them more than they need us
The Patrick Dempsey: #0104
I write weekly articles for educators who are ready to get unstuck from outdated curriculum, resistant institutions, and a career that was built for a world that no longer exists.
Landing the Plane
Not sure how it happened, but I started writing about a recurrent theme of entrepreneurship versus education.
As a quick reminder, we started with some data that showed that real social mobility comes from business ownership, not degree completion.
This part of the exploration—comparing how airlines and higher ed approach the discomfort “essential” to their respective products—emerged from conversations in the workshops and consultations I run where faculty are increasingly complaining about the lack of student motivation.
In Part 1 of this part of the airline series, I argued that students are disengaged because we’ve made discomfort psychologically unintelligible. Unlike airlines, we ask people to endure an uncomfortable experience without giving them any of the choreography that makes endurance possible.
In Part 2, I broke down the eight specific moves Aviation Behavioral Engineering uses to make a miserable experience survivable—and pointed out how little of that most courses do.
This part is where we land. 😉
Students as Customers
Airlines are competing for customers. They are earning the right to put people in uncomfortable situations to help them get somewhere they want to go.
We saw that every move they make—the reciprocity, the narration, the snack, the map—is a deposit. A way of saying: we know we’re asking something from you, so here is something back.
The parallel to education should be obvious. But it isn’t, because higher education has rarely had to earn anything.
That’s changing.
Students don’t believe us anymore. They can see that AI can do the thing we’re asking them to do. While they might think the degree has value, the work we are asking them to complete to get there lacks all credibility.
Nothing we say will convince them they need the skill. If we’re honest, we shouldn’t even be sure they do either. We don’t know what cognitive skills will matter in five, ten, or twenty years. We’re guessing. And those guesses are often based on what worked for us, or on principles from research we heard thirdhand about things that supposedly matter.
So, overall, I’m not convinced that anything we teach is actually essential. But, for the sake of this article, I’m going to assume some aspect of your discipline is. I’m going to assume that the goal is to somehow preserve some core aspect of what and how you teach because students would be less successful without it.
But, I’m also going to assume that students won’t believe when you tell them that.
Which means you’re asking something from your students.
And the question this article asks is simply: Are you giving anything to them first?
Rule of Reciprocity
Here are a few examples of how this works.
Give, Give, Give, Ask
There’s a principle Alex Hormozi—whom I’ve written about here—talks about in the context of business that maps cleanly onto this problem: give, give, give, ask.
The idea is that you earn the right to make a request by making deposits first. The idea is that you deliver so much value that the person who receives it feels almost obligated to reciprocate.
Now, think about your course, do you do that???
(Yikes.)
What do we do? We open with a syllabus full of requirements, deadlines, and consequences. The number of courses I’ve seen that demand obedience and work from students even BEFORE the course begins . . .
Then, once the course does begin, what do we do? We spend the entire semester asking. This assignment. This due date. This policy. This transparency. This . . .
There is no give before the take. And to be clear, the slides, module intro video, and the feedback 2 weeks later don’t count.
There is no deposit before the withdrawal. Students are expected to comply first and find the value later—if there’s even any value to be found.
5:1 Ratio
Relationship researchers have long argued that negative interactions carry disproportionate emotional weight. John Gottman’s work on marriage found that stable couples needed roughly five positive interactions for every negative one during moments of conflict.
Whether there is some perfect mathematical ratio for teaching isn’t the point. The underlying idea is what matters: negative experiences are expensive.
If a learning experience takes from students repeatedly without giving enough back, the relationship to you and the course cannot but degrade.
Gifts in Discomfort
Which brings us back to the airlines.
Every move in the Aviation Behavioral Engineering framework is, at its core, a deposit. The greeting, the vent, the map, the snack, the calm voice during turbulence, the announcement that you are beginning your descent—none of it removes the discomfort. But all of it is the system giving something back before it asks for more compliance, more patience, more surrender.
That is the model. Generosity is not surrender to the “consumer model” of education, it is the foundational model of human relationships.
While There’s Still Time
A few things are keeping traditional higher ed afloat these days.
First, legacy elites will always have demand. The network effects are real and generally worth it. As more of them offer free tuition at certain income thresholds, applications will increase, acceptance rates will decrease, and their perceived prestige will continue to compound.
Second, some degrees actually require credentials that still run through higher ed.
Third, many families are still convinced by decades of marketing that a degree is the surest path the economic mobility.
Fourth, many students still just want to have the “college experience.”
Fifth, somehow, in some places, the credential still seems to have value.
But none of that changes the underlying challenge: students don’t believe you.
Students can now see, clearly and in real time, that the system is asking them for something that seems rather unbelievable. And it is being asked for without making a compelling case for why they should give it.
Airlines know that doesn’t work. Every flight is a negotiation between what the passenger is being asked to surrender and what the experience gives them in return. The ratio has to work. The deposits have to outpace the withdrawals. That is how trust actually functions.
Education is going to have to learn the same thing.
More policies, more surveillance, more insistence that the discomfort is the point—none of that is working. AI has already made it impossible to pretend otherwise.
Look, I think we need to fundamentally rethink the entire value proposition and delivery chain. But in the meantime, I’ll assume you still want to ask something from your students.
The question this article asks is whether you have given them anything first.
Paid Subs
There is a simple technique I use in my course and workshop design.
It was inspired by creators, and has AI made it absolutely essential.
It takes about five minutes. And once you start, you will never write a course any other way.
