Am I a Client or a Product?

Back in August I read a story about a student doing his MBA at Harvard Business School who got in an argument with a woman in the Career Services department. He argued that she should see it his way because he was the client. She fired back, "You're not the client, you're the product."


Which leads me to ask, am I a client or a product of IMD Business School? I'm paying a lot of money to get this education, which would give me the advantage of a client to choose how my money is spent. However, I have no control over the curriculum, and am not much more than a pawn that takes in the information that is sent my way. Likewise, a product is generally made from a pre-designed mold and the product itself has no control over what shape the machine will give it. By that logic I would have to say I'm a product.  But they've already told us that they don't make any profit on the MBA program, they make their money on the Executive MBA program.  So offering the MBA at all is more like a service, and we would be clients of the service.  But they're offering the service so that the "products" that are created during the service will go out into the world and recruit people for the Executive MBA.

Which leads to the next question - is being a product a good thing or a bad thing?

I posed the client or product question to my Economics professor, Ralf Boscheck, and his answer was, of course, that we're both. He mentioned that they're not trying to shape each one of us to be exactly the same, but also said he would be very nervous letting students choose the curriculum. I sort of see his point, but I actually think there should be more input from the students to choose topics and subjects because we're the ones who just came from business jobs and are heading straight back into business jobs. A professor who's been teaching for the last 15 years may not have as direct a connection to relevant topics as the students do.