Students evaluating faculty

First, the quote for the day:

"Students are the inventory," Mr. Crumbley says. "The real stakeholders in higher education are employers, society, the people who hire our graduates. But what we do is ask the inventory if a professor is good or bad. At General Motors," he says, "you don't ask the cars which factory workers are good at their jobs. You check the cars for defects, you ask the drivers, and that's how you know how the workers are doing."

To some extent, this metaphor is rather crude.  But, there is a great deal of merit in the argument that Professor Crumbley offers.

I pay a lot of attention to student feedback.  It is not only from those evaluation forms, but throughout the year from their explicit comments, and from their behaviors. 
But, at the same time, I don't view what I do as some kind of a factory job with students being the output.  Neither do I see students as customers.  In fact, I often point out to students that in a public university like ours, taxpayers pay for about 40% of the operational expenses, and almost all the capital expenses ... which then all the more reinforces Crumbley's point that society is our customer ... but then I hate this customer metaphor ....