Comments on: A New Day For Educational Marketing http://marketingeducation.ncmark.com/2010/02/a-new-day-for-educational-marketing/ Exploring the connection between marketing theory and the world of education Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:40:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: Jon Saxton http://marketingeducation.ncmark.com/2010/02/a-new-day-for-educational-marketing/comment-page-1/#comment-516 Jon Saxton Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:32:22 +0000 http://marketingeducation.ncmark.com/?p=633#comment-516 Mark, I agree the game needs to change. And ed marketing needs to change with it. Seems to me, when you put this together with what you have blogged earlier, you might agree with Robert Zemsky (Making Reform Work, Rutgers U. Press), that universities and colleges need to re-focus on their most important product: learning. They need to no longer be satisfied to market new facilities and what they are teaching to students and move to understanding, improving and then marketing what their students learn. With the enormous costs and time commitments and the trends towards curricula designed not for liberal learning so much as utility in particular job markets (with undergrad majors in business, media, etc.) outcomes and the metrics to support them seem likely to be more and more demanded by higher ed consumers --especially from the 2nd tier institutions where the reputational brand and payoff is not as strong. Learning outcomes seem to me to be the next new market and the next new branding and marketing imperative/opportunity. And there seems to me to be just as much or more imperative for an outcomes focus in liberal learning as in more utilitarian learning, as much evidence is accumulating that many of these more job market-directed curricula fail to prepare their graduates with important basic skills in writing, contextualizing and synthesizing information and experience. Jon. Mark, I agree the game needs to change. And ed marketing needs to change with it. Seems to me, when you put this together with what you have blogged earlier, you might agree with Robert Zemsky (Making Reform Work, Rutgers U. Press), that universities and colleges need to re-focus on their most important product: learning. They need to no longer be satisfied to market new facilities and what they are teaching to students and move to understanding, improving and then marketing what their students learn. With the enormous costs and time commitments and the trends towards curricula designed not for liberal learning so much as utility in particular job markets (with undergrad majors in business, media, etc.) outcomes and the metrics to support them seem likely to be more and more demanded by higher ed consumers –especially from the 2nd tier institutions where the reputational brand and payoff is not as strong. Learning outcomes seem to me to be the next new market and the next new branding and marketing imperative/opportunity. And there seems to me to be just as much or more imperative for an outcomes focus in liberal learning as in more utilitarian learning, as much evidence is accumulating that many of these more job market-directed curricula fail to prepare their graduates with important basic skills in writing, contextualizing and synthesizing information and experience.

Jon.

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