SimpsonScarborough: Intelligent Marketing for Higher Education

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