When the apple is ripe it will fall. [Irish Proverb]

So even if students are not "customers" in the colloquial sense, they are consumers, and shouldn't adults who pay a great deal of money for their education have a major role in deciding what that education is like? In a macro sense, sure, people who want to learn certain skills may choose to go to vocational schools, people who just want to get their tickets punched can go to degree mill schools or get distance learning degrees, people who seek prestige and its perceived rewards may go to elite schools, people who seek value may go to state schools, and so on. But in a micro sense, what role should students have in determining programs, curriculum, requirements, content, etc.? More fundamentally, do students have the ability and right to do so?

One common argument regarding ability is that students are adults, and as responsible and knowledgeable individuals are capable of determining (and perhaps have a responsibility to do) what is best for themselves. There may be some quibbling as to whether students are really adults, as their cognitive processes, maturity, and more are still in the early stages of adulthood, and college is sort of a "half-way house" between childhood and adulthood (or that alleged "real world"). I'd say that college students are formative adults. But this may be a specious argument, as who really is an "adult" anyway? Don't we all want to know what we want to be when we grow up. Aren't some of us -let's call them men- just children in bigger bodies? But I digress...

The not-quite-adult argument is a tenuous one at best. So if we assume that college students are adults, the real question is whether they are capable of educational self-determination in that micro sense. To cut to the chase here, do students know what they should know? They often know what they want (i.e., "best practices" to use on their job, easy classes and good grades, to be entertained, to get a degree that creates the opportunity for a rewarding career, to learn about things they find interesting, to find their calling, etc.) It's a nice idea that students should have the major say in deciding what should constitute a degree, major, course, lecture, assignment, etc. But it is probably extreme to maintain that students as adult customers should determine what their needs are and how they should be satisfied. It may also be extreme to maintain that students are not adults and are not customers so these sorts of academic decisions should be made for them. Somewhere in the middle lies the notion that as fledgeling adults in a society that values freedom of choice and the consequences of those choices, where those young adults have tacitly agreed to act as aprentices in entrusting their mentors, that these students bear certain rights and responsibilities in their education, as do their mentors. But where is that line to be drawn?