Students are stakeholders in their own educational system

A stakeholder is an individual or an entity that stand to gain or lose from the success or failure of a system or an organization. From a business perspective the stakeholder analysis theory asserts that an organization should pay greater attention to its stakeholder’s suggestions and services in order to incorporate them in the overall decision-making process. Just like it is in business world, the management of academic institutions involves several stakeholders such as students, teachers, parents, the government, etc.

[Gross & Godwin, 2006].

The main objective of an education system is to produce happy and useful products (students) who will fit in the various core areas of the society. In order to achieve this, an academic institution should aim at doing more than just educating its students in the classroom, rather they should focus on the whole student experiences. This argument is informed by the notion that, a quality academic experience, no matter how thoughtfully conceived, is not enough, as well educated students may transfer to another institution, or even if the dissatisfied students stayed and go on to graduate, they will not feel institutional allegiance.

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[Gross & Godwin, 2006] An academic institution can achieve this goal by recognizing and acknowledging the role of students other than reading books and passing exams. Students can participate in the educational management process through the following ways. They can be involved in the building of the school curriculum; curriculum development process undergoes several stages before it is finally adopted, such planning of objectives, material selection, tryout, etc.

During the tryout stage the new curriculum is normally taken to a few selected schools whereby students, teachers, and parents’ views are noted and necessary corrections made. They can also be involved in the school decision making processes; some schools have students’ representatives sitting in core decision making committees e. g. BOG meetings. These representatives make sure that the entire students’ interests are safeguarded. Through the delegation of duties; school heads/principles should delegate duties to various stakeholders in educational settings.

Some leadership duties can be well performed by students if given the chances e. g. Students can be appointed/elected to head various departments such as sports/games, guidance and counseling, etc. The proper utilization of the suggestion boxes: students should be allowed to air their opinions concerning any important issue through posting small notes in the school suggestion box. This could be made a reality only if the school administration could show signs of putting into consideration such opinions and not sending them to the trash.

Students could be utilized as potential vessels of raising funds for various school activities e. g. they could be involved in walks for soliciting money from the conscious public. This would make more active in both the social and financial management of their educational process. [Campbell (1986)] Nevertheless, the active involvement of students in managing their educational process has got its own strengths and pitfalls.

A well structured educational system that puts great emphasis on all its stakeholders’ interests is characterized by better planning, new and creative initiatives and improved resource allocation, all which help to reduce failure while guaranteeing success. Active participation of students in education management definitely leads to more satisfied and hardworking students who feel good about themselves and their alma mater, students who can service their enormous student debt with great ease, students who can generate immense interest in their academic home among prospective students, and hence become true donors.

[Bertic, & Morris (1990)] On a negative note, too much involvement of students in their educational management process leads to time wastage especially when sensitive matters are involved or there is a conflict of interests. The school administration may find it hard to implement decisions which are the student body feels are limiting to their perceived freedom or even adding extra financial burden to them.

The amount of space that students’ enjoys in regards to their involvement in the management of their educational process determines a lot the building of relationships among the various stakeholders in the educational setting. If students are given more space in core decision making, they will tend to be more satisfied and hence be more willing to unclench their fists when it comes to relationship building with other stakeholders such as the educators, board of governance, the government/ministry, the community, etc.

[Bertic, & Morris (1990)] On the other hand if they are denied the opportunity to actively determine their educational process destiny, they tend to be rebellious, uncooperative, mechanical, and ultimately end up clenching their fists the more. This because they will see educational managerial decisions being alien, oppressive, rigid, and not part of them. They will end up loosing confidence with the educators, the government, the community, their parents, etc. [Bertic, & Morris (1990)]

References:Bertic, E. & Morris, G. (1990). Effective School Management. London: Paul Chapman Ltd, accessed on March 10, 2009 Campbell (1986). Introduction to Education Administration. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, City Education, accessed on March 10, 2009 Gross, K. & Godwin, P. (2006). Education’s Many Stakeholders: Educational administrators are increasingly recognizing what businesses have long understood: customer satisfaction matters, available at; , accessed on March 10, 2009.