In the last few decades universities became service providers. In this case an open question is raised: what is the student role then? This article aims to enlighten the discourse of the student role. At first glance, a student is supposed to be just a passive service consumer--a client. Yet recent service management literature proposes that clients (students) have a very important role in creating the value of university service products. So the educational literature discourse reveals that a student may be a client or a member of the academic community. This article aims to reveal the discourse of student roles in the nowadays university and to highlight main aspects of student role transformation. To achieve this aim, scientific literature analysis has been performed. The first part of the article focuses on the student-client conception, revealing the dual nature of this role. Meanwhile the second part of this article analyses the role of student as a member of the academic community, emphasising relations between student approach to learning and his (her) involvement in the community. In the third part of this paper, main aspects of student role transformation are revealed.