Category: conferences

Liveblogging from CASE: Legislative update and forecast

One of this morning’s two sessions had to do with the national legislative outlook. The short answer: fiscal growth in defense and homeland security, not so much elsewhere, but a few glimmers of hope for higher education — even though the federal fiscal year ends in 15 days and elections are less than two months away.

Panelists for today’s session:

  • David Baime, vice president for government relations, American Association of Community Colleges.
  • Becky Timmons, director of govenment relations for the American Council of Education.
  • Matt Owens, assistant director of federal relations, Association of American Universities.

A little bit about the session before I check out of the hotel:

A common agenda

David Baime opened by emphasizing that the U.S.’s “big six” higher education associations (listed below) work jointly to promote a common agenda.

‘Tough fiscal climate’

In terms of the federal budget, it’s a “tough fiscal climate” in D.C., Matt said. Increases in defense funding and homeland security but not much for non-defense discretionary funding (for student aid, federal research, etc.) makes up about 13 percent of the budget, and “that’s what everybody’s fighting over.” David added that fiscal conservatives have homed in on this piece of the budget pie.

In student financial aid, there is one small bright spot, Matt said. One House bill that includes a $100 increase in the Pell Grant need-based student aid. The funding level hasn’t been increased in five years. Even though it’s a small increase, it’s important to fight for it, Becky said.Research funding: The outlook is mixed, Matt said, with good news for large agencies, but “other ones are suffering.” President Bush’s American Competitive Initiative includes proposals that could benefit higher education, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational programs, and research agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other similar agencies.

In response to a question about promoting education to legislators as a “public good” rather than an “individual benefit,” Becky talked about the Solutions for Our Future program (the subject of an earlier session at this conference). “If we allow higher education to be viewed in those narrow terms, it creates an atmosphere where funding can easily be withdrawn, even in student aid. Because if it is a personal benefit, then you should pay for it.” Initial research by the Solutions program indicated that the public didn’t see education as being a common good but found that people did see public benefits.

“One of the things that is so clear to us is that we’re not doing a good enough job of explaining higher education to the Congress or anyone else,” Becky said. Individual campus solutions to problems related to access, retention, etc., need to be communicated to legislators, who typically perceive colleges and universities as out of touch, “closed entities.” “We need to find a better way of telling our story.” Issues such as tenure and academic freedom “don’t translate well” to legislators, she added.

‘A little bit wonky’

One of the communications challenges higher education policy groups faces has to do with discussing policy in “a sound-bite world,” Becky said. “We’re policy people, a little bit wonky, and our issues are complicated,” she said. “We live in a sound-bite world.”

The “big six”

The six main lobbying associations for higher education are:

  • The American Council on Education
  • The American Association of Universities
  • The National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC)
  • The American Association of Community Colleges
  • The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)
  • The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICO)

Liveblogging from CASE: The Dan and Dave show

This post is out of synch because I was moderating this particular session so couldn’t blog in real time, as they say.

One of this morning’s sessions — “Bloggers as Journalists and Journalists as Bloggers” — featured two terrific Philly bloggers: Dan Rubin, who has a full-time blogging gig at the Philadelphia Inquirer (the blog is called blinq), and Dave Ralis, who blogs for Phillyburbs as well as on his own site. Both of these guys have enjoyed long and successful careers as reporters but have made the transition to new media. Even so, they still consider themselves reporters and use that skill set in their blogging.

This session stirred a lot of discussion about the role of blogs and other social media in terms of traditional vs. non-traditional delivery of the news. A few of the points that came up:

  • Higher ed PR people should monitor the blogosphere — just as we do traditional media — to see who is talking about their institutions and how. This is easily done by searching for your institution’s name on Technorati, a popular blog search engine/aggregator. One of the conference attendees mentioned that she shares a “blog report” of mentions with upper-level administrators on her campus, just as many of us do with our “clips reports” of media mentions. (A good idea! Wish I’d thought of it.)
  • Bloggers are journalists, too. One question came up about whether media relations staffers should grant bloggers’ interview requests with college presidents. Both Dave and Dan agreed that PR folks should have policies for dealing with bloggers’ requests, just as we may have similar policies for granting interviews with journalists. (Another good idea I wish I’d thought of.) We discussed possible criteria such as blog popularity (the assumption being that granting interviews to popular or influential bloggers might be preferred, while requests from small-time bloggers could safely be ignored), but Dan noted that a post by some little-known blogger could be picked up by an A-list blogger and spread the story virally.
  • Correcting misleading information in the blogosphere can be tricky. If you discover a misleading blog post about your institution, it’s a good idea to post correct information in the comments section of that blog (if it has a comments section, and many of them do). Or if your institution has a blog of its own, you can post the correct information there.
  • We don’t control the message. Neither does the mainstream media. At best, we can help to influence the message by becoming part of the conversation in the blogosphere.

Similar themes came up in an afternoon session about crisis communications in the web 2.0 era. Does your institution’s crisis communications plan consider the potential impact of the blogosphere? The recent tragedy at Dawson College in Montreal serves as an immediate and evolving case study of the power of blogs, the photo-sharing site Flickr and other social networking phenomena to tell and shape the story of an ongoing crisis — and to become a big part of the story.