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As chair of the American Marketing Association's 2007 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, I would like to invite you to join me and over 400 of your colleagues November 11-14, 2007, in San Diego. Please bookmark the AMA site—registration information and next year’s schedule should be available in July or August. Looking forward to seeing you in California!
Three long, productive days after it began, the American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education ended as it began – with a flourish and some new twists for the 400-plus attendees who trekked to New Orleans for the 17th annual event. Some thoughts as we depart New Orleans:
This is my third and final year as Conference Chair. My thanks to the Steering Committee members, who worked tirelessly for seven months planning the conference. I am pleased to pass the torch to President Elizabeth Scarborough, my senior partner who was selected – I promise – well before joining our firm earlier this year.
-- Christopher Simpson
I walked away from the second full day of the AMA conference with energy infused by a theme that connected the general sessions—the importance of truly understanding and then accordingly messaging to reach your audiences. The first session on Tuesday was an address by University of Phoenix President Emerita Laura Palmer Noone. She provided an overview of the history of the University of Phoenix and the fundamental reason for its for-profit dominance—at its inception it pinpointed its prospective student market and introduced programs that met its audience’s needs. The rate of change within the University of Phoenix and the turnaround time for responses to student needs and inquiries drew audible gasps from those sitting around me. Can you imagine instant paper edits and live-person paper reviews within 48-hours? How about faculty with office hour availability of 20 hours per week?
In no way am I suggesting that the University of Phoenix model would be a fit for other institutions for MANY reasons, and I understand the workload sharing made possible by a faculty of 20,000 nationwide who are solely focused on teaching and student interaction. Instead, I believe their strong student satisfaction (measured through student surveys) is tied to their desire to meet the students more than halfway. As a last thought, I have to say I appreciated how she described the University of Phoenix—“a place to reinvent yourself.” Based upon their success in reinventing higher education, that seems fitting.
Bryan Cook from the American Council on Education provided the luncheon address. He delineated current enrollment trends and provided thoughts on future enrollment demographics by state, gender, and ethnicity. Bryan debunked the “missing male” myth, instead framing the declines in male enrollment as issues in middle and lower income Hispanic and African American male populations. His insight into the future makeup of the faculty and presidential ranks (by gender and ethnicity) were fascinating and if realized could fundamentally change the face of academia in the coming years. I highly recommend you take time to review his research findings on the ACE website. The take-way from Bryan’s talk were the tools to understand who we are marketing to—now it is our responsibility to research and create the messages to reach those audiences.
Those of you who know President Elizabeth Scarborough can probably imagine the look of glee on her face as detailed statistics and graphics floated across the screen—with each of Bryan’s articulate summaries, Elizabeth looked more and more like a kid seeing the Christmas tree for the first time on Christmas morning .
Finally, John Pope from the Times-Picayune addressed the group regarding higher education marketing in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. I won’t expound on John’s talk—CEO Christopher Simpson claimed “dibs” on it.
--Teresa Valerio Parrot
The Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education early yesterday kicked off with a poignant presentation by New Orleans’ own Dillard University President Marvalene Hughes. She captivated the audience with her reflections of Hurricane Katrina’s impact on her campus and community. The joy, anticipation and energy of “Freshman Week 2005” were cut short by the storm and its devastation, necessitating unprecedented reconstruction. It is hard to wrap your arms around the following details: all of the campus buildings except for the chapel were submerged in five to ten feet of water; between September and January, crews of 200 people worked seven days a week to clear debris and destruction from the campus including the remains of three burned-down dorms; the school had to reopen in January from the Hilton—which served as housing and dining for faculty, students, and staff and provided classrooms for an entire academic year; the fall 2005 student population was 2300 – today it is 1126. Each of those would seem like an uphill battle, but combined the crisis level is overwhelming.
President Hughes’ ability to lead the campus through the crisis was immortalized by the 2006 Dillard alumni. She explained that the campus has a commencement tradition of “walking through Oaks.” Despite the devastation wrought upon the campus, only one of the campus oaks died as a result of the flooding. Their largest graduating class to date replanted that oak and named it in honor of Marvalene—what a tremendous testament to the difference she has made in the lives of those students, and the Dillard community as a whole.
The leadership of St. Edward’s University President George Martin was also hot topic at the AMA. President Martin provided a luncheon talk with Vice President Paige Booth on “Winning Over Your President” to become a marketing advocate, and he could not have articulated better the need for higher education marketing. There were plenty of smiles over his wit and because “he got it.” I heard many people mention their desire to have him meet their president, and one even boldly asked for one of his hairs so that they could extract his DNA and clone him. Gotta love the comments you overhear in a group setting :).
-- Teresa Valerio Parrot