Posts tagged with ‘higher education’

The fallacy of the worthless degree

The New York Times has a story on students who attend trade schools to give themselves a boost on a possible career, only to find themselves in a worst spot than they started due to lack of opportunities and now saddled with debt from their practical education.

None of this is really new, nor is it a surprise and it’s not likely to change anytime in the near future. One of the readers selection comments had other ideas though:

Agreed, it can be a rip-off. But, er…how about those expensive university degrees in Feminism Studies that cost upward of $100,000 and more? How about all those Journalism degrees awarded to students years ago who still haven’t paid off their loans because delivering mail is not such a high-paying job? You guys at the Times need to dig a little further and explain exactly what a young person does after he gets that Environmental Studies degree. I imagine that impoverishing yourself by going to a regular university is far more devastating than doing the same with a trade school.

It’s going to be increasingly important as time goes on to use all of the tools at our disposal to educate people on what colleges and universities — specifically the non-profit ones — are actually selling.

Interview with Joe Favorito

I’ve been reading Joe Favorito’s blog for a while now and I especially enjoy when he dovetails into talking about college athletic branding and marketing.

Joe has been in the business for over decades and he’s worked for two NBA teams, the US Tennis Association, the WTA Tour and other sports organizations during his time in the business.

He was gracious enough to agree to answer a few questions for me for edustir:

Me: Working across different sports leagues over the years, was there a consistent thing that allowed you to integrate well into each of them?

Joe: The ability to find and then tell good stories is key. Everyone has a story, you just have to be able to listen and help good people figure out what their story is.

Me: Some people might look at different sports and think, while the communications issues might be similar that each would require a particular acute awareness to the nuances. Was this something you studied prior to joining a new organization?

Joe: It’s all the education process. I can safely say that when I went to tennis I was not a huge fan, I was not a NBA fan when I went to the Sixers and I had no clue about mixed martial arts (MMA) when I first started at the International Fight League. You learn very quickly by listening to the experts, no matter what the business is.

Me: I focus on higher education and one of the things that’s become apparent, is despite the big business of some revenue sports, there still seems to be a lack of deftness with colleges and universities leveraging the web as effectively as the pros, despite the differences in their customer bases. What do you think it will take for them to begin reallocating their print dollars into new media? Is there a pro parallel that you noticed over your years on that side of sports?

Joe: I think that it is the still the old adage, “the shoemakers kids are worst shod.” College athletics still tend to be very insular for whatever reason, and the fear of investing when there is such turnover slows the growth. Those that invest as brand will grow, it just takes time.

Me: It seems we read stories constantly about a college athlete who gets suspend kicked off a team for something they write on Twitter or Facebook. We see it with pro athletes less, but as a senior communicator, do you think there are ways organizations could get in front of these types of issues or are they just part of the evolving mediums of communication that exist today?

Joe: All evolving. Years ago, sports radio was going to be the death of sports…then blogs, then college sports, at one point it was television. At the end of the day, the medium evolves and adjusts and the level of professionalism seeks its spot.

Me: Do you think smaller, non-revenue generating athletic departments (NCAA Division 2 & 3, NAIA) have as much of an interest in (athletic) brand strategy as much as larger, better known schools?

Joe: They certainly should. It is all about drawing students and finding new streams of revenue and there is no reason why smaller schools should not invest in their brand as well. Mom and pop stores do it, minor league sports team do it…why wouldn’t local colleges who are especially connected to the local community?

Thanks to Joe for doing this, I appreciate it and I hope you do too! Be sure to check out his blog, as it’s a really great resource.

Stirring things in a different direction

I’ve been kicking around ideas for a while to keep this blog alive. I started it two years ago this week. Given my goals when I began it were extremely modest, I’ve far surpassed my expectations. But I enjoy the dialogue and interaction with my peers in higher ed immensely, so while I considered ending it a few times, I thought better of it.

Instead, I moved the blog to a new platform (tumblr) and left the old site’s archives intact. edustir.com will redirect here automatically. I moved over some “greatest hits” posts, but other than that, this site represents a fresh start. edustir began as Observations From Left Field, a quasi-personal blog about work that morphed into Reading, Writing and Big Ideas, before adopting the edustir.com name (thanks for a Synonym project that I never used it for) about a year ago or so.

The RSS feed is already integrated into the new blog too, so you won’t have to do anything to keep receiving posts from the blog. Bear with the design alterations, as I’m sure it’ll keep changing as I decide which direction I’m headed.

While the blog will maintain a primary focus on higher education, I’m going to shift the conversation away from strictly the institutional presence side and talk more about athletic marketing web perspective in education. I think it’s a topic that needs coverage and having gone from strictly sitting behind the desk, to doing that and coaching too…it’s given me a bit more to chat about that I’d love to share.

I won’t stop chiming in on other issues, but I feel like a new niche and a new platform for the site will invigorate the blog well into the future.

So thanks for reading and commenting and hopefully, I’ll provide you with lots more to participate in the coming days, weeks and months.