The Romero Report: 048 Communication Vs Marketing
How is selling universities as products hurting academia?
Aldemaro Romero Jr. The Romero Report
How is selling universities as products hurting academia?
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
2015 will be remembered as a pretty bad year for higher education in this country. Erosion of funding for public colleges has continued, and has resulted in a poor response by college and university leaders. Instead of changing the business models of their institutions, they have resorted to the myopic reaction of just cutting their budgets. These cuts have affected the quality of their quality while increasing what they are charging students for their education – an obviously unsustainable strategy.
Then we have witnessed pretty ugly racial incidents across campuses, revealing both societal ills and lingering racism that has characterized the sector since its inception. Yet, attacks on affirmative action policies continue to mount. But these problems have not been the only bad news for higher education. Campus shootings, narrow-minded approaches to issues of mental health, continuous obsession with meaningless college rankings, blind support for athletics over academics, lack of preparedness of higher school graduates, almost religious adherence to technological fixes proposed by false prophets and their acolytes, and failure by the federal government to live up to its promise to provide an unbiased and simple way for people to assess the performance of colleges and universities all contributed to the bad year for higher education.
Probably what has been even worse for higher education has been misinformation about it and its role in society. From totally inaccurate “truths” disguised as facts being broadcast in different media to just plain disparaging of the whole postsecondary enterprise based on a wave of anti-intellectualism, the sector has been given a bad name in the last few years. No wonder that a pronounced number of good people are leaving academia and coming out very vocally about it.
Not that we have lacked any good news to share. There has been significant improvement in the job market, new and more statistics reaffirming that a college degree is a worthwhile financial proposition and an increase in enrollment numbers by international students. Yet, the higher education marketing departments seem to keep concentrating on giving prominence to athletics and “feel good” news instead of helping the public in general and the powers-that-be to understand the societal benefits brought in by investing in higher education
The question is, what kind of news can we anticipate for higher education in 2016? Probably it won’t be much better. Funding in general is expected to worsen and cases of institutional failure propelled by bad leadership will continue. Boards of trustees and college leaders do not seem to envision what is coming or to have learned from past experiences. Case in point is the number of colleges and universities that have announced closing or severe restructuring.
Also, expect a lot of nonsense to be thrown at higher education during the political campaign of 2016, with more falsehoods being disseminated, more demagoguery, and expect the real issues not being discussed. The political season will result in a climate of fear toward factors – real or imaginary – that professional politicians know they can bank on when it comes to electoral dividends. As I heard once from a professional politician in private, “Talking about education in a political campaign is not a worthwhile investment, unless you blame the opposition for its current situation.”
Yet, I think that the political campaigns represent an opportunity for higher education to come out stronger, but only if we grasp the opportunity. For example, the two major candidates of the Democratic Party have promised to make public higher education free (or at least to make it more affordable) while their Republican counterparts have remained moistly silent or have objected to those proposals. I think that such a discussion in 2016 can be highly beneficial, but only if we take advantage of the opportunity. And the opportunity resides in reinstating the benefits of a strong higher education sector, the presentation of facts about higher education and to bring back to the American consciousness how investments in colleges and universities have made (and can continue to make) a tremendous difference in the well being of the nation.
All what we need to do is to recapture the narrative about how support for higher education and innovative policies changed for the better the course of the country. From the establishment of the first colleges in colonial America, to the unequivocal support given to the idea of postsecondary education by the nation’s founders, to the development of the land-grant institutions during the Civil War, to the renewed investments made in the aftermath of Sputnik, they all changed the country for the better.
Higher education leaders need to learn from politicians on how to improve their message to reap the benefits of a complicated political situation even if that means broadcasting messages that seem simplistic in nature, but that will resonate with the general population.
We need to reassert that the basis of the American dream is high quality and affordable education, that the only way to maintain global leadership in different areas is through a well-funded and innovative system of colleges and universities and that the best way to combat threats is by making the population better educated, eradicating the worst of our panic-stricken fears. We have much to learn from the politicians’ playbooks. Of course that means that we, in higher education, need to develop an insight in to how the system works. After all, most of the funding and support for education depends not only on public backing, but also the support of people in power. We have to learn what works and to model our message accordingly. That requires courage and imagination.
Where can we start? Let’s summarize what we are trying to do with a simple message that will resonate everywhere: “Support for higher education will make America great again.”
PDF Version
2016 Can Be A Year Of Opportunity For Higher Education
This is a video version of a radio interview by Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. with Craig Steiner about the art of fundraising.
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Craig Steiner about the art of fundraising from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
In the last few weeks two films have been released that on the surface seem to be unrelated in content, but are closely linked in their message.
The first of those films is “Spotlight.” It tells the true story of how a team of reporters for The Boston Globe worked to uncover a pattern of sexual abuse of children and its cover-up in Massachusetts by the Catholic Church. This investigative reporting earned the newspaper the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service. The movie is considered to be a very accurate representation and shows how these criminal acts represented a systemic problem within the church. The movie received wide acclaim not only because of its artistic merits but also for the exposé of the facts.
The other film is “The Hunting Ground.” This is a documentary that had a limited theatrical release on February, but was broadcast by CNN on November 22. It deals with the issue of sexual assault on U.S. college and university campuses. This documentary included not only numerous on-camera interviews with victims of these crimes, but also with scholars who have studied the issue as well as former university administrators.
“The Hunting Ground” also received wide artistic acclaim, but also its share of negative criticism – particularly from the higher education institutions mentioned in the film, such as Harvard and Florida State University. Administrators of those institutions claimed the movie to be inaccurate and taking sides with the victims. The release of this documentary has coincided with a rise of reports in the media of sexual assaults across campuses during the last few years at both prestigious Ivy League institutions and smaller lesser-known ones.
According to the American Association of University Women, one out of 10 colleges reported rapes on their campuses in 2014. Given that in the U.S. there are about 5,000 institutions of higher education, that means that at least one rape has occurred in at least 500 of them in a single year. Yet, most likely this is a conservative figure. As anyone who is aware of the nature of crime statistics, sexual assaults are among the least reported. Many women feel uncomfortable reporting these kinds of crimes for a variety of reasons. In most of the cases the perpetrators are people they know because they are other students or coworkers. Further, the U.S. Department of Education has levied fines to colleges and universities on numerous occasions for underreporting these crimes, which supports the contention that these statistics must be very conservative inNot that we lack legislation addressing this issue. The Clery Act of 1990, named after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old student at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, who was raped and murdered in the campus residence hall in 1986, was specifically designed to make all institutions of higher education that receive some form of federal financial support (virtually all of them) report crime statistics on their respective campuses.
But, obviously, that has not been enough. Now states from Connecticut to California have come up with tougher legislation aimed at colleges and universities to take more firm stances in preventing, reporting and handling sexual assaults. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), along with nine other sponsors, has introduced the Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA) bill aimed at reducing sexual violence in institutions of higher education. This bill, introduced in 2014, is still pending in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Education has issued new guidelines on how to handle sexual assaults on campuses while the U.S. Department of Justice, acting on recommendations from a White House task force, is funding more research on this issue.
Given the seriousness of the situation one wonders why so many colleges and universities have not taken a more proactive stance on this issue? The answer is two-fold. First, very few academic leaders have had any training on how to handle crises that affect the public image of their institutions. As any expert in communications would tell them the position they need to take has to be very proactive and open to show that they are really doing something that is really meaningful, not just to issue perfunctory statements aimed at protecting the brand name of their institutions.
The other is that these leaders think – erroneously – that the only means to protect their reputation and that of their campuses is by softening (if not totally covering up) the problem. And some of them have already taken a lot of heat for their stances, such as the president of the University of Iowa, Sally Mason, who said in an interview that sexual crimes were part of “human nature.” Bryan Golden, the campus police chief at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Georgia, was fired after he was quoted as saying that most sexual assaults are not rape, but “women waking up the next morning with a guilt complex.”
We should not forget that early colleges were founded by churches and once public institutions began to proliferate, they adopted the same cultural habits of the private ones: insularity, secrecy in their handling of internal affairs, and the tendency to overprotect their own. And that is where the connection between the sexual crimes at the Catholic Church in Massachusetts and the ones on campuses resides.
One of the most chilling moments of “Spotlight” is when at the end of the movie they show the long list of cities where sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been reported. Unfortunately the list of colleges and universities where sexual crimes occurred last year alone is even longer. Unless the culture of insularity and mismanagement is changed, higher education will be facing the same bad image as the Catholic Church.
PDF Version
Sexual Assaults On Campus Need To Be Addressed
This is a video version of a radio interview by Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. with Dr. Rajbir Hazelwood about the modern history of England
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Dr. Rajbir Hazelwood about the modern history of England from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. The Romero Report
How does political rhetoric hurt academia?
This is a video version of a radio interview of Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. with Dr. Susan Hume about human geography in Africa.
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Dr. Susan Hume about the geography of Africa from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
In December 1990, the newspaper Sunday Grit announced that it would close after 108 years of publishing only what it deemed “good” news. This Williamsport, Pa., publication characterized itself for being “The nation’s original good-news newspaper.” Its 25-year old German immigrant founder Dietriock Lamade, liked to call it “the joybells of life.” Aimed mostly at rural America, it was supposed to bring joy to its readers in the form of highlighting good news, innocuous comic strips and the like.
As Lamade told his employees in 1900, “Always keep Grit from being pessimistic. Avoid printing those things which distort the minds of readers or make them feel at odds with the world. Avoid showing the wrong side of things, or making people feel discontented. Do nothing that will encourage fear, worry, or temptation. Wherever possible, suggest peace and good will toward men. Give our readers courage and strength for their daily tasks. Put happy thoughts, cheer, and contentment into their hearts.”
A lot of things have changed since then. For one thing, the number of newspapers in this country has declined steeply. According to the website Statista, in 1981 there were more than 1,700 daily newspapers being published in the United States. Today, there are little more than 1,300. Despite the attempts of making them more available online, their numbers keep falling – as do their revenues. According to a study by the Pew Research Center published this year, the revenues from newspapers (in both their printed and online formats) have declined by half between 2008 and 2014. One of the consequences of these declines has been the decimation in the number of reporters working for those media.
This sad landscape has been the result of many changes in society. Increasingly people tend to read the news online regardless of the source, particularly if they don’t have to pay for it. Also, more and more people like to read or hear news from outlets that conform with their own ideological biases. And, of course, tastes have changed. Superficiality and catchy headlines are now the favorites among a significant sector of the population. News about celebrities dominate, only to be interrupted by stories that feed into our greatest fears, whether they have to do with terrorism, immigration, or contagious diseases. In-depth analyses of complex issues have become less noteworthy to that public.
Higher education is facing many public image problems nationwide. Cost, enrollments, finances, sexual assaults, shootings, leadership failures, and even a justification for its utility are many of the communication challenges that academia is confronting today. All these are becoming part of the negative picture in which the academic world is being portrayed today from people-on-the-street and social media chatting to disparaging mentions in the current presidential campaign.
Unfortunately, the response from colleges and universities to these challenges has not been very effective. These institutions continue to broadcast headlines that have to do with athletics, major fundraising coups, or other “feel good” stories. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that the bad rap higher education is getting these days can only be confronted with a more in-depth approach to issues that help to educate people.
The other aspect institutions of higher education are not paying attention to is where prospective students and their parents are getting information about a particular college. Glossy brochures and unattractive Web sites no longer satisfy students and their parents. According to a series of articles published in the last few months in The Chronicle of Higher Education, students who are looking to make a final decision about where to attend school spend more time looking at the social media related to the college they are exploring rather than to the “official” literature.
Because of its culture of insularity, not many in higher education are realizing the serious crisis this change in communication behavior is posing. Increasingly the leadership of colleges and universities are leaning on their marketing staffs to be the conduits of their image, and that is where the first of many cultural clashes are taking place. To begin with, most people with a marketing background are more inclined to take the stance that what they need to do is to “sell” something. However, higher education is not toothpaste or a detergent. It is not even a commodity. It is a unique intellectual enterprise aimed at improving society through better educated and skilled individuals.
Higher education leaders tend to emphasize “feel good” news over substantive stories that convey why we need more and better higher education and why that matters today more than ever. To that end we need to emphasize the contributions colleges and universities have made in the past, are currently making, as well as those that will help to change future for the better. The stories should be about how postsecondary education has the ability to change lives, to better the economy, and to contribute to a safer and more prosperous society. They should also be about the current challenges facing higher education and what we can do to overcome them.
One of the first lessons I learned about responsible journalism when I started to write for the media in the 1970s was that the press should be the light illuminating where the ship of society should be going, not just shedding light on its wake. If colleges and universities cannot be the beacon of society, they are failing one of their major roles. And that is too bad, since they are supposed to do more for the community than to become diploma mills.
That is the difference between being an intellectual endeavor and a factory of commodities. Between being an administrator and being a leader. And also the difference between marketing and communication.
PDF Version
Communications Now A Culture War In Academia
This is the video version of Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. radio interview with Dr. Drew Dolan about gambling as part of public policy.
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Dr. Drew Dolan about gambling as a public policy from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Book Reviews
I just published two new book reviews on higher education. They are:
Zakaria, Fareed. In defense of a Liberal Education. New York: W.W. Norton, 2015. 204 pp. $23.95 hardcover (ISBN 978-0-393-24786-8). Polymath 5(3):31-34.
and
Iarovici, Doris. Mental Health Issues and the University Student.Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2014. 264 pp. $41.95 paperback (ISBN 978-1421412382). Polymath 5(3):35-38.
You can read them at:
Mental Health Issues and the University Student Book Review
In Defense of a Liberal Education Book Review