The market has spoken

John Duffy, registrar of the University of Sussex (my workplace), argues that we have a moral obligation to give our students better services at a better price in return for their high fees (“A community challenged…or a global best-in-class”, Opinion, 18 April). He thinks that he knows best what students want. But the first rule of the market, the rules of which we are now supposed to be playing by, is that the customer is always right. In the instance of the Sussex outsourcing dispute, our customers are telling us what they want (or don’t want) quite clearly. Moral obligations aside (which surely extend to employees as well as customers), perhaps it would even be good business practice to pay attention to their wishes?

Nicholas Till
Leverhulme research fellow
School of Media, Film and Music
University of Sussex