Many educational institutions have reconceptualized their relationships with students to conform with principles of total quality management (TQM). One facet of this orientation has been to portray students as customers and treat them accordingly. The metaphor of students as customers does place students at the center of the educational process, where they belong. This advantage, however, is outweighed by the dissimilarities between commercial transactions and education. Placing education on the level of a commercial transaction compromises the goals of education by (1) defining customers too narrowly, (2) confusing short-term satisfaction with long-term learning, and (3) insufficiently accounting for student-teacher interaction.