The Business of Teaching : USC Professor Lures Students to His Class With Promise of a Money-Back Guarantee
A USC business professor who teaches students about money-back guarantees is putting his own money where his mouth is.
Richard B. Chase is offering a $350 refund to any student who isn’t satisfied with his graduate-level, fall-semester class on service management.
“I advocate service guarantees” in the business world, says the pipe-smoking, gray-haired professor. But in education, “it seemed to me that what was missing was something that was really special, such as guaranteeing the core service of teaching. I never heard of anybody doing it.
“I’m marketing this class and backing it up, too,” says Chase, 51, who could lose more than $20,000 if all 65 students took refunds. With that much at stake, “I have to do a gut check and say, ‘Can I do what I promised?’ . . It forces me to really get my act together and be prepared.
“I’m trying to model behavior for students. . . . You should be guaranteeing the quality of the work. That’s the bottom line.”
Chase, who tells students to be audacious in the business world, says the offer is “exciting. . . . It captured people’s attention.”
His students agree. They say his promise to reimburse $250 toward tuition and $100 in book costs helped raise enrollment from 25 the last time the class was held.
“The money itself was relatively insignificant,” says MBA candidate Roy Forbes, 29, of Los Angeles. “The way I looked at it was that it was a novel offer. Here you have a class on service industries and your professor is practicing what he’s preaching. . . . He’s offering his retirement and his wife’s retirement as collateral, in effect, that he will provide you with what he promised.”
Another MBA candidate, Sarah Page, 27, of Manhattan Beach, calls the offer “a great idea. When you are coming to a business school that claims to be a top business school, there should be a guarantee that your classes are going to be good. It’s very expensive to go here.”
Two-thirds of the way through the semester, students say Chase is doing a good job.
“He’s dynamic. He uses a lot of different media. He expresses himself well,” says graduate student Heidi Fillo, 30, of Van Nuys. “I haven’t heard anybody say they are (thinking of applying for the rebate).”
That’s good news to Chase. In his office after class, the professor sits on a couch, his foot up on a coffee table, and says he can’t afford to refund the full $1,515 tuition for the three-unit class.
Chase says he has “some savings” to pay for a few rebates at his reduced rate, but no money set aside in case everyone cashes in.
“I wish you hadn’t asked me (how much it could cost),” he says. “I don’t like to think about it.”
When he announced his offer last spring, his insurance agent asked if he wanted to buy another policy, he recalls.
Chase’s criteria for the rebate are simple. He’ll offer them “if I’m not prepared. If people say (they’re) just not learning anything. That this is something (they) don’t have to go to school to find out about.”
But he adds that he wouldn’t have begun the experiment if he hadn’t received strong student evaluations in the course last year.
Chase, who has taught for 25 years, has also limited his liability. In a memo to students, he said that disputes over grades and minor irritation over the course wouldn’t qualify for rebates--dissatisfaction has to be strong. Additionally, students must complain first so Chase can try to correct what’s bothering them.
Few professors have proposed anything like Chase’s plan. Representatives of other local colleges, the American Assn. of University Professors and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching say they haven’t heard of a similar offer.
Educators will watch Chase’s experiment, and if he avoids going broke, his idea could spread. Jack Bosting, dean of USC’s school of business, says he likes it.
“If it’s successful and the faculty want to do this, I would encourage it,” he says. “I suppose down the line you you’d think about whether the institution should sponsor it. That’s a bigger step.”
Ravi Kumar, chairman of the Decisions Systems Department of the school of business, also likes Chase’s proposal.
“Sometimes it’s taken for granted that students walk in and they expect good teaching,” he says. “Unfortunately, as universities have moved more toward research and less emphasis on teaching, what should have been an obvious strength has not always been there.”
Kumar says he’s asked other business faculty to think about doing what Chase has done “to get them to think about whether we’re doing a good enough job teaching.
“It’s so easy to settle down in a style of teaching and not think about trying to improve it,” he says. “Something like this shakes you up and makes you think ‘Can I do a better job?’ ”
