It’s the end of another long week. (You can always measure the length/busyness of my weeks by the number of blog posts. Zero posts since last week = busy, busy week.)
But I digress. It’s Friday. And that means it’s time to get all up in Friday’s face and get schooled with five pieces worth reading from the past week or so.
1. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Bob Brock of Educational Marketing Group adds his voice to the chorus talking about higher ed’s troubles. Could higher education in the U.S. suffer the same fate as the housing market of a few years ago, or the dot-coms of the early 2000s? “[A] menu of government subsidies have supported higher ed for decades, artificially mitigating free-market impact on tuition and enrollment,” Brock writes. “But these are unsustainable.” It’s an interesting read.
2. Bubble? What bubble? Meanwhile, FastCompany’s Anya Kamanetz (she of DIY U fame) sees no bubble for higher ed (except for the University of Phoenix). “A college degree, unlike a home, is nontransferable. It can’t be flipped. Nor can it be foreclosed on.”
3. Coke’s more expressive brand strategy. Joe Tripodi, Coca-Cola’s chief marketing officer, writes in Harvard Business Review about the big brand’s move toward a more expressionistic way of measuring engagement. Tripodi defines expressions as “any level of engagement with our brand content by a consumer or constituent. It could be a comment, a ‘like,’ uploading a photo or video or passing content onto their networks.” Tripodi’s ideas for why expressions matter should make an impression on higher ed marketers. (A thank you to @vedo for sharing this.)
4. A chancellor’s undercover episode bungled. The University of California, Riverside had a big moment in the spotlight last Sunday when its chancellor, Tim White, appeared on an episode of CBS’s “Undercover Boss.” If you didn’t get a chance to catch the show, Laura D. offers a not-so-rave review on her Marketing for Higher Ed blog. You can also read what the chancellor himself has to say about the experience.
5. Better blogging: tips from 3 biggies. At first, I wasn’t sure this Jeff Bullas post would have much value for small-time bloggers like me, since it focuses on three of the biggest, best-known blogs around. But some of the lessons listed at the end may be worth thinking about.
Photo: Blowing Bubbles by Steven | Alan.
Andrew Careaga 