Service Science: The Foundations of Service Engineering and Management

Chapter 7

Education as a Service and Educational Service Systems

According to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (http://www.ahdictionary.com), education essentially is defined as follows:

• The act or process of educating or being educated when it is referred to a series of activities for imparting or acquiring knowledge.
• The knowledge or skill obtained or developed through a learning process when it is suggested as learning outcomes.
• A program of instruction of a specified kind or level, such as driver training, and K-12 and college education, when it is implied to types or purposes of learning;
• The field of study that is concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning if it indicates a discipline.
• An instructive or enlightening experience when it is meant as human cognitive development that improves one's ability or competency over the period.

Evidently, the implied meaning of education surely varies with the context in which a given type of education takes place or the subject that one genuinely wants to learn at a given time. In this book, education mainly implies the act or process of imparting or acquiring knowledge through school systems. In particular, we are interested in education in schools where formal educational service is offered.

More specifically, at a given education institution, instructors are education service providers and learners are education service consumers. Administrators and many daily support staff manage and assist ...