University Students are not Customers: When Marketing Goes Awry!

Abstract

Knowledge and the official pursuit of it through the attainment of a degree has been turned into a readily for sale commodity. Students are being perceived and treated by university hierarchies as though they were a part of the traditional customer paradigm in marketing. This notion of students as customers has caused a misinterpretation of the relationship between universities and students. We argue that the citizen-authority relationship metaphor provides a more accurate description of the relationship between universities and students than the traditional customer-supplier relationship metaphor. If this paradigm drift towards students being customers is allowed to continue unchecked, then there may be long-term consequences for the university sector.