Education is often seen as a contrast (or even contest) between being a process of liberal education (with the aim of fostering life-long independent, innovative and creative thinking useful throughout life) and delivering vocational education (immediately applicable skills and competencies, ready for the world of work--"employability"). The debate about the values of each approach and of the ideal balance between them reaches back into history. In Western higher education, there is a long history of university being about liberal education as curriculum in terms of students taking varied and key courses, and also as a process applied no matter what the single honours subject. We see now the growth of the "Honours College" at some US universities as a form of intensive teaching for the select few. This author contends that there is a key problem of just what is supposed to happen in a university, and exactly what "higher" education is. In Farrington and Palfreyman (2006, Oxford University Press) "The Law of Higher Education," there is a chapter on "The Student as Consumer?" In the 2012 second edition, this analysis has been greatly expanded. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are seen as being under increasing pressure from students as paying customers, as empowered but not necessarily well-informed consumers within a complex, interactive consumption of a service. In this article, Palfreyman summarizes some key points from the section within the 2012 edition that considers the application of consumer protection law to the student-university education contract.