A good rock drummer tends to play the role of a band conductor (driving intensity, coordination), whereas in jazz the bass player does some of that allowing the top drummers to become free-wheeling stars.

So which of those are ya? Will the scientists and other professions be taking a lead from your work do you think, or will be stealing their limelight?

It seemed to me that what was being overlooked was that generally (in those days anyway) most students commenced university at 18 years of age and still had a lot of growing up to do. Many were living away from home for the first time and as much of their ‘education’ was about life skills as it was about scholarly subjects – in the classroom, as you note, but largely outside of it.

This feeling was reinforced when I went to do postgraduate study in Germany; the students were 2-3 years older on commencing university and had done some of the growing up in compulsory civil or military service. They were ready to provide the classroom with relatively undivided attention. The oversight of and demands upon the students by the university was minimal. Assignments and exams seemed to be more a matter of ‘exercises’ to prompt the students and provide them with feedback rather than examine their performance on a criterion. It seemed to be simply assumed that the students were there to learn, that is what they would do, and at the end of their studies, they would be more educated.

Simply put, the students were not treated as either consumers or funding-related FTEs and their education was not treated as a product. It struck me as a healthy relationship between mature adults.

Commercialising relationships and emphasising extrinsic motivations can erode what is most important in relationships – responsibility, commitment, obligation, and good faith. When the relationships are trivial, such as many situations involving a buyer and seller in a marketplace, that might not be a great loss but I suggest that the relationship between students and their teaching institutions is far from trivial.

But I think that once you add in information asymmetry (companies not being clear about how their products are made — and even lying about it in some cases), protectionist international rules about who can work where at which occupation, and criminal behaviour, the explanation for the factory collapse isn’t a simple as ‘poor people die at work — get over it’.

Now you’re offered two options.

A. Western retailers inspect plants and provide workers with accurate information about actual risks at the firm, so that workers can negotiate the appropriate total compensation bundle and sort to the firm providing the most-preferred bundle;

B. Western retailers enforce binding safety floors.

‘A’ causes problems where workers can’t be made to understand the real risks; ‘B’ causes problems where workers put more value on income than on risk reduction.

I suppose that the choice between A and B depends on whether you think the floor in B is set to match the likely preferences of workers, or whether it’s set by American lobbyists to price out the competition. I tend to prefer A.