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I want to respnd to the idea of students as customers. One of the reasons firms are so interested in their customers is that in addition to customers providing revenue customers also provide information about changing preferences and changing markets. Thus, it is important to have focus groups to determine where markets are and where they are going. Students, likewise, are much closer market dynamism than professors and educational institutions, because students are insulated from social change by already having a salary and career. Educational institutions stand to learn a lot from students if students are incorporated in some democratic process for setting educational policy. Students, for example, are the driving force, the reality so to speak, of multiculturalism and signalled for years this became a matter of public debate the changing demographics of the country. In addition, the anxiety and new employment contracts produced by economic restructuring of the 1980s and by the 1990-91 recession has more immediacy for students than for those with jobs. Students are quite sensitive to these changes and are therefore probably best source of information for new social realities. kim gillespie <[log in to unmask]> Program in Modern Thought and Literature