Has the relation with students changed significantly in the last 20+ years? I left academia 20+ years ago but I am closely following SE Academia (mostly because it is interesting and gives a different perspective from industry).

I noticed several questions regarding the "well-being" of students (broadly speaking), an example being a recent question on whether to adapt to their request to cancel lectures.

When I was a student, and then a teacher, the rules were that the lecturer is coming to provide a lecture, at a given time, and if someone is not present then they had to catch-up a way or another. This was the same in primary, secondary school (in Europe, mostly Germany and France).

Has the relationship with students changed in these 20+ years? 

I am specifically not looking for an opinion about these changes (which can range from "in my time professors were demi-gods" to "now everyone is equal and the ones who pay set some rules"). I rather want to understand whether the dynamics between lecturers and students is different today, and ideally why (because of, say, how technology helps to provide up-to-date lectures?, or that the number of commercial school is higher?, ...).

I am mostly interested in a European perspective, but anything is welcome.
To answer the second part of your question: The notion of "students as customers" - probably as unpalatable to faculty as it is loved by administrators - is surely part of this shift. 

After all, if students are "paying customers", that naturally recasts the degree into a "product" that they begin to imagine they have an automatic right to.