the Sam Jackson College Experience

"I don’t like the whole concept of “selling” a college as a brand, whatever currency that may have today–it detracts from the student goals of making a good fit and ensuring a good match."

Why do you assume that marketing/branding and ensuring a good fit for a student are mutually exclusive ideas? All marketing and branding does is publicize the existence of a product (yes, education is a product....just an intangible one). As an enrollment officer, you have to be able to sell your school to people - show them what it has to offer and how you can benefit from it. You have to create plans to communicate with prospective students and their parents and you have to understand how to communicate a specific message in ways that they will understand it. That's all that marketing is. Branding allows for a consistent message across the board and, if done properly, will actually give you a more accurate view of the institution. Now, do some schools go the evil way of the used-car salesman with these ideas? Absolutely, but that doesn't negate the fact that someone with a marketing background is much more qualified to communicate the identity of a school than someone with, say, an engineering background or a chemistry background. It's just a skill-set, like any other.

Good points all, and I agree with you generally. That one sentence you chose doesn't stand well on its own for conveying my point- I am bothered (as I have always described on this blog) by the more blanket and untargeted attempts. Places where the school looks to be more focused on getting more applications to reject than more high-quality applicants to accept. Projections of branding, marketing, and sales with less fuzzy intentions.

I started by saying that I don't think sales and marketing go hand in hand with teaching or honesty--obviously, they can go together perfectly well sometimes. Great tools for conveying information to teach or to better present something honestly and fairly, as you said. I just put it out there to voice my concern about the possible hazards of recruitments approaches with their hearts in the wrong place. Things that worry me as someone looking out for the students first and foremost.

Marketing and branding can just publicize a product, or they can also misrepresent the nature of that product... and it's when thinking of education in more 'commercial' terms that I worry about people getting led astray.

edit: updated post to reflect some clarifications, hope that helps-- changed your quoted sentence to the following "I don't generally like the whole concept of "selling" a college as a brand, whatever currency that may have today--it can detract from the student goals of making a good fit and ensuring a good match (which should be the college's goals too!)" which I think describes more accurately my concerns.

What most schools don't realize (unfortunately) is that they actually have a vested interest in only recruiting the students that are are good fit for the institution. Think about it: College's spend a lot of money recruiting students and the larger their inquiry pool, the more money they spend on mailing costs, phone calls, recruitment events, etc... If they give the students the right information to decide if their school is a good fit for them, then students who would not be a good fit at the school would self-select themselves out of the process, thus saving the school money and resources. It will also bring down their cost-per-student if they only target those types of students who are a good fit for the institution.

Beyond that, let's say for a moment that the school does a great job in fooling all the wrong students to enroll....ultimately that's just going to decrease their retention rate when students say "What the heck?! This isn't what I signed up for!" and transfer somewhere else. Again, that loses the school money....not only does it lose them all the money they just spent recruiting that student, but it also loses them future tuition checks and reputation points.

So you see, looking at things in more commercial terms actually falls right in line with your thoughts (and the students needs) as well. A person with a marketing background would know all these principles. Honestly, I don't think your beef is with schools who hire people with marketing/branding backgrounds....It should be with those who don't hire people with the background to know the economic reasons for recruiting the right kind of student

Possibly, possibly--but what if that same commercial lens was used and the marketing folks you mention simply chose to weigh the short term interest more than the long view?

...but then one could argue that that same view could help in the end, as the marketing-like changes made at say, Brown or Duke back in the day resulted in not just prestige but associated $ and as their endowments rose so could their program offerings and financial aid...

ahh, we're trapped between a set of mirrors on this one!

That's why I look at the confusion and conclude that the best approach, especially if it was adopted across the board, would be for schools to stray off the dark path however alluring it might be for a near term boost in rankings (which could correspondingly bring increased alumni donations, etc etc).

Need some case studies or something, I guess.

Well it looks like you and I may be in agreement after all! I might be one of those "evil marketing folks", but I'll take real life marketing that targets the right kind of student any day over a broad fake approach for temporary gain

Have to disagree with you on that one point -- you don't seem like one of the evil ones! Not from skimming your blog, at least. Some of the things I saw there seemed very insightful and distinctly good! You seem to be someone who 'gets it' and is using that power for good.