RESEARCH ARTICLE: Pharmacy students’ and faculty attitudes regarding consumerism in academia
Keywords:
academic entitlement, student consumerism, pharmacy education, student consumer, professionalismAbstract
Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the attitudes regarding student consumerism and academic entitlement among pharmacy students and faculty and the association of student consumerism with professionalism in the classroom.
Methods: The authors surveyed students and faculty at a college of pharmacy to measure attitudes for ‘student as the consumer’ and ‘student as the product’ of pharmacy education. The authors assessed the face validity, factor analysis, and Cronbach’s alpha value to examine the validity and reliability of their newly developed scales. Further, they used ordinal logistic regressions to analyse the association of student consumerism with professionalism in the classroom among pharmacy students.
Results: The majority of student participants were female, had bachelor degrees, and were employed as pharmacy technicians or interns. The student survey scales exhibited high validity and reliability. Amongst pharmacy students, the authors found high levels of attitudes for students as both the consumers and the products of pharmacy education. However, most of the faculty believed that students are the products and not the consumers of pharmacy education. Further, the students who believed that they are the consumers of pharmacy education were more likely to be unprofessional in the classroom.
Conclusion: Although students had high levels of attitude regarding student consumerism, they still believed that the goal of their education is professional competence. It is important to curb student consumerism to curtail unprofessional behaviour in the classroom. Education and support should be provided to the faculty in their efforts to check consumerism among pharmacy students.
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