Learning martial arts: are you a student or a customer?

I've been to clubs where there's a big push to pay membership, buy tshirts/sashes ("We don't do coloured belts here", though seniority was signified by tshirt/sash colour...). In some cases, it was clearly commercial - I've heard of another club in London having direct debit (not sure what you call that outside UK) for membership fees, regular gradings for batches of students, and the franchising of teaching to senior instructors at best, or to senior students at worst.

In other cases, clothing was available, less to make money, but so that they could wear something they'd be proud of. I'm proud to say I've never had a teacher in silk pyjamas though!

Here, http://internalstyle.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi... , the sifu writes of a further distinction between student and disciple.

Depends on if you attend a "McDojo" or not. For example, the fees for attending my dojo don't go to the sensei, they goes toward using the dojo room at the rec center. The classes are small and personal, and we study a technique until our sensei is satisfied for the day. We do drills and practice, as per normal, then we work on applications. As my sensei says, the difference between practice and application is angle. That is to say, you move a lot more in a fight than you do when you study and practice in a dojo.

Contrast that to my unrelated studies of karate as a child where we were the class size was huge (30+) and we were pushed toward buying training gear from the sensei. In that instance, you become less like a student and more like a customer.