Students as clients: a professional services model for business education

Abstract

My purpose in this article is to describe a professional services student-as-client model that I believe offers a more realistic guide for core business school operations than either the customer model or the partner model. I begin in the next section by noting the situations where the partner model is well suited, and show why I don't believe it is realistic for most programs. I then define the client analogy, illustrate how it offers a better fit, and describe some of the insights that it suggests.