Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study Bayesian dependency modelling (BDM) to validate the model of educational experiences and the student-customer orientation questionnaire (SCOQ), and to identify the categories of educatonal experience in which students expect a higher educational institutions (HEI) to be student-customer oriented. Design/methodology/approach: This paper employs a cross-sectional quantitative survey study, mixed methods research, exploratory factor analysis and BDM. Findings: The validated model of educational experiences and the SCOQ; results indicate that students expect to be treated as customers in some, but not all categories of educational experience. Research limitations/implications: The authors contribute to existing literature on two fronts: the validated model of educational experiences and the categories of educational experience in which students expect to be treated as customers. Practical implications: The validated SCOQ presented in the paper may be used by other HEIs to assess the degree to which students expect a particular HEI to be customer oriented. Also, HEIs should assess students' expectations concerning student-customer orientation before employing such an approach. Originality/value: The paper presents a validated model of educational experiences and a SCOQ. Additionally, the study does not investigate whether students expect a HEI as such to be student-customer oriented (as most studies have done so far); instead, the aim is to find out whether, in which categories of educational experience and to what extent students expect a HEI to be student-customer oriented. Thus, the study explores the phenomenon of student-customer orientation at a deeper level, i.e. separately at the level of educational experiences.