U of C censures students for criticizing prof on Facebook, runs into Charter challenge

Speaking of personal and non-personal remarks RP, this is personally insulting.  Attack the argument, not the person.

I don't want to single out students, because this attitude is pervasive among staff, faculty and administration too, but increasingly the participants and stakeholders in a university are conditioned to view education as a commodity--as a product to be consumed, a "clean industry," a capital gain. It's not, of course, but I'll leave that for another time. It means that students view their education from the point of view of a consumer--they assume they have all the qualifications to decide what "counts" as good education, and that the customer's voice is the only thing that matters. They feel that their "complaints" aren't part of a larger conversation about the administation of education, but that they should result in immediate consumer satisfaction: a better deal, a censured employee, future considerations. They look at grades as end results, not processes; and diplomas as capital, not symbols of history.

All of this stems from the false belief that choice can save you. It can't. It won't.

Fortunately, many staff, faculty and students know this and fight it daily. Cf. Québec.

We have created a university system that is based on commodification. We should not be shocked that students respond to the structure we have created.

Ah, okay.  If I understand you correctly, choice puts more power into the hands of the students (because educational institutions, both public and private, are then forced to compete for student tuition and public-funding dollars).  "If I don't get X at College A, then there are a half-dozen other colleges I can go to which will give me X."  That competition may lead educational institutions to offer things that diverge from traditional educational offerings (such as using resources to establish "parent liaisons" - like they have at the University of Minnesota to address the near constant meddling of parents in everything related to their college-age kids).  I can see both positive and negative aspects to that.

Yet, I wouldn't put all or even most of the blame on "choice".  The world has changed significantly in the last forty years with globalization.  China and India, among others, have sucked up massive numbers of lower-skilled jobs in countries like the USA and Canada.  That has likely caused students to rethink what an education means to them.  Understandably, many want something that is more vocationally oriented (an accounting, food science, engineering, or similar degree) because when they get their degree, they want a job (and not a low-level service job).  And, I suspect this would be true whether or not education was made a public good.  It is certainly the case when students are paying their own money for a degree.  But I think it would also be the case if society was footing the bill because people would want the key scarce resource of education - tax dollars - used in a way that would maximize the economic benefits (I suspect that people would rather have grads with engineering or bio-science degrees than with fine arts degrees).

And, I do think that the entitlement mentality, culturally, has played and will continue to play a significant role in how students view their education.  The most corrosive aspect of that mentality is a steady undercutting of the concept of personal responsibility - because that mentality tells people that their problems are caused by someone or something else ("the system," oppressors of various sorts, etc.).  They are not told: You have to delay gratification, you have to be disciplined, you have to work hard, you have to sacrifice, etc. to get things you want - despite any systemic problems that exist.  So, students (through no fault of their own, really) arrive in college thinking they are entitled to everything good without significant personal effort and sacrifice (and if they don't get it, then, quite naturally, it's the school's fault, or a teacher's fault, or any of a broad array of external causes).

It's a complex subject.