College teaching and the adult consumer: Toward a more sophisticated student body

This article describes the development of the student consumerism movement. It identifies the factors which have caused the rise of consumerism as an issue in education today-the implications of a change in the age of majority, changing demographics and enrollment trends, and the broader social and political pressures for improved educational services-and some of the results of the consumerism movement. A preliminary report on the response of the University of Nebraska and several other institutions of higher education in Nebraska to this movement is presented in the article. The Nebraska response, an innovative experiment supported in part by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, is an attempt to make students more sophisticated consumers of their own education.