This paper examines six key university teaching and learning processes using Checkland’s CATWOE mnemonic and the SIPOC model from lean operations theory. The analysis shows that students play a number of different roles in these processes: as customer, actor, supplier, raw material and end product. The analysis also shows that instructors play a number of different roles in these self-same processes: as supplier, actor and customer. The paper concludes that viewing students as customers is overly simplistic. The paper suggests that students, instructors and support staff must accept that students play a multiplicity of roles, sometimes simultaneously, in university teaching and learning processes. The paper suggests that awareness among instructors of the different processes taking place and of the roles that students and instructors themselves play in those processes will improve the ability of universities to carry out their teaching and learning mission.