Academic institutions are not particularly good at anticipating the future. Their administrative structures are designed to ensure continuity and resist change. Though academics are no longer in most cases in religious orders, they still operate as if they are safeguarding an eternal and sacred trust. They are great at maintaining the status quo.

Well here’s a future that is coming to academic institutions very soon . . .

I just completed a round of focus groups with extremely able college bound high school students. In the course of the conversation, I had a chance to ask them if they had used third party social media sites, such as College Confidential, Unigo and College Prowler, in their college search. The majority of these students had not. Of those who had used the sites, several were circumspect about the information they found. However, there were two students who said clearly and categorically that they had eliminated colleges that had previously been on their short list because of negative reviews they had read on one of these sites.

So right now the weight given to social media sites in the college selection process is not so great, at least not with the kind of students that were targeted by this particular piece of research. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that the importance of student reviews on social media sites in the college search process is only going to grow. Today it might be a minority of students who would be dissuaded from applying to a college because of negative reviews on such a site. In a few short years, it will be many, many more.

Most colleges and universities are ignoring this trend in part because their plates are full with other issues and in part because third party reviews of the college experience challenge what they view as their traditional prerogatives. Academics hate the idea that on-line conversations out of their control could be used to evaluate the quality of their courses or their teaching. This attitude infects administrators in charge of student life, dining etc.

Regardless of whether they like it or not, this future is fast approaching. It won’t be helpful for institutions to bury their heads in the sand and pretend this sort of thing will go away (not, that is, if they depend upon enrollment revenue for their survival).

Here are the two steps they should take:

1. Immediately create a position in their marketing and communications department dedicated to social media marketing. Colleges need to get up to speed quickly about the social media world. They need in-house expertise and savvy.
2. Focus on creating opportunities for their fans – current or prospective students, faculty, alumni or staff – to engage in on-line social media. Ultimately, there is no way to silence critics in the social media world. The only way to counter them in the future will be to outnumber them with positive comments.

This second activity involves a paradigm shift that I doubt most institutions are up to – moving from an introverted posture to one that is more transparent and open. So it is predictable that at least some institutions will be blindsided by the rapid rise of third-party reviews on social media sites and find themselves trying to play catch-up. That’s a future you can count on.