Marketing Higher and Further Education

An Educator's Guide to Promoting Courses, Departments and Institutions

Gibbs, Paul, Knapp, Michael

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136609404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A manual for anyone wishing to market higher or further education. It offers business-oriented guidance for readers whose main preoccupation may not be marketing itself, but who nonetheless need access to promotion skills, and it covers theory, practice and case studies.

1

Introduction

[The UK brand of education] enables students to see the Britain of the 21st century; innovative, dynamic and the true leader in the new world order. British education is a first class ticket to life and I want to see that ticket given to as many people as possible. (Tony Blair, South China Morning Post, 27 January 2000)

We chose this quotation to highlight the central role that education and its promotion plays in a country’s prestige and reputation. This comment by the British Prime Minister was not made in a political debate but at the launch of an overseas marketing campaign for British education. Educational marketing is of central concern and not just for institutional publicity departments. It is also big business. In the US, in the year 2000, the total expenditure per full-time higher education student ranged from about $32,000 for a full university course to $7,255 for students attending community colleges for two-year associate degrees. In the UK the figures reflect the lack of real diversity and limited private as opposed to public funding, and come to about £5,000 for most general courses, regardless of the type of institution.

A recent UNESCO survey indicated that institutions and governments spent about 6 per cent of their overall budgets on educational marketing, so a significant amount of money needs careful and targeted use. The fact that education is also increasingly a global business with rapid growth in distance learning facilitated by the Internet, the Web and e-mail will mean greater pressure to obtain value for money from marketing expenditure in the future.

The word ‘marketing’ often evokes feelings of concern, even mistrust, within the world of education. It is associated with sales, advertising and public relations. Educational practitioners, whose mission is vocational and who believe sometimes in knowledge for knowledge’s sake, often feel uncomfortable and want to distance themselves from it. Marketing, however, is a process that can make a positive contribution to both social and economic capital. It is not just about turnover or profit; the experience and skills that we talk about can be applied where decisions on resources and on communications need to be made and implemented.

We think that it is essential to put the educational offering into the context of a marketing process, for it is the logical progression within the process that can help institutions understand who are their ‘customers’, how their needs are changing, and how an institution needs to adapt, develop and change to meet these needs. Without a systematic analysis of the context within which learning and knowledge is being offered and examined, scarce moneys spent on marketing can be wasted. The Guardian of 1 May 2001 quotes a report by the Council for Aid to Education that says voluntary donations of $23.2 billion were given to US colleges and universities from the business sector, religious and other groups and alumni. In the UK it is thought that hundreds of millions of pounds are raised in this way, but there is no official record.

The same Guardian report revealed that the traditional ‘old order’ of perceived quality among universities has changed significantly. New names like the University of the West of England, Northunibria, Loughborough are appearing among the top 10 universities in the Quality Assurance Agency’s list of universities with the smallest number of individual departments below the inspection threshold. The Open University shares eleventh place with the London School of Economics. There is even a University College (Canterbury Christ Church) in the top 20. So everyone is capable of playing on a broader stage and competing not just in the national markets but in world markets.

The pace and scale of change in recent years in the acquisition and use of knowledge means that the marketing practices of focus, segmentation and customer satisfaction have growing importance as the physical locations of institutions matter less and less. In order to survive, institutions need to understand what they are good at, what they can contribute, and how they can convince others that they provide quality, flexibility and content in order to add value and to become partners in sharing and shaping the futures of their students, researchers and benefactors.

In order to apply the marketing process we have to use marketing terminology, but we hope we use marketing terms in a way that is readily understood by a wide audience – not just marketing professionals. It is important for as many people as possible within an institution to understand how to use the marketing process to achieve their goals. This means everyone from Vice-Chancellor to junior lecturers.

We start by considering marketing as a strategic tool and then develop the specific implementation tools needed to achieve objectives successfully. This approach commences with an audit to decide who you are, where you are, and how you fit in (or do not fit in). The audit is a fundamental device that can also be used periodically as a monitoring tool to decide whether you are still going in the right direction or whether changes in the environment and ‘the market’ suggest a change or modification to the route.

One of the key audit skills is market and consumer research and that is the subject of Chapter 3. Having decided our destination or goal, we turn to how we should position ourselves in the market through the mechanisms of segmentation and programme design.

We follow this by considering the pricing of educational programmes and their promotion through advertising, direct mail and exhibitions. The field of public relations has a broad remit covering the reputation and image of an institution – not just its programmes – so it deserves a chapter all to itself. Advertising and promotion lead us on to the all-important issue of student recruitment and retention. Finance and funding are ever-present concerns, so we devote a chapter to the variety of ways that fund-raising can assist the development and progress of an institution towards its goals.

‘Information and communications technology’ (ICT), the Web and the Internet generally are having such a fundamental effect on the delivery and acquisition of learning and knowledge that we have concluded the book with a chapter on e-education and the changes it will bring to the ways in which we must meet the needs of the students of the future.

Why Market?

Education has very complex programmes and products. Defining the role of an institution is not just a simple matter of identifying and attributing value-producing activity. The activities of higher and further education often involve highly intangible matter. The institutions themselves are motivated by real goals that arise from service and social responsibility, although the need to recognize the economic imperative is increasingly making inroads into this. An institution ‘competes’ in a market with other institutions but, unlike in other markets, it may have lacked or felt no need for the profit motive as a measure of success. Governmental and market pressures are changing this, and education’s resistance to the professional marketer and the marketing process will fade as the sector recognizes its value in helping to shape its future practices. Diversity and focus will be the driving forces for the educational institution in the future, as its specific role in society is challenged by corporate global needs.

This move towards expression of diversity is recognized in the English Higher Education Funding Council’s (HEFCE) 2000 policy statement on diversity, in which it speaks of mechanisms being in place for sustaining and encouraging diversity. These depend on ‘the willingness of the Universities and Colleges to take opportunities to develop their own distinctiveness, and to use the discretions which current arrangements provide”. Diversity is a marketing notion and the HEFCE sees a diversified sector as one ‘with the capacity to meet the varying needs and aspirations of those it serves: students, employers, purchasers of HE services and the wider community’.

There are four key areas that suggest that the appreciation and use of the marketing process can help significantly in shaping the future of the provision of education:

• The complexity of the offering. The product or programme encompasses an educational experience for the student, who is simultaneously a consumer of that experience. The product is also a resource provided to society for the development of other students. All other experiences, including support services within the institution, are value additions that enhance the student’s ability to absorb and acquire the courses of instruction.
• The complicated social role of educational institutions. The independence of departments or faculties sometimes makes it difficult to add value through changes in practice and often requires significant resource investment, particularly when it involves distance learning, part-time participation and ‘outreach’ into community programmes.
• The increasing importance of financial performance. The institution must shape its market offering in such a way that it attracts investment - tuition fees, council grants, funding donors and others.
• An approach to the market that sees students as informed consumers. Students are not the homogeneous post-school cohort of the past. The increasingly different student segments – part-time, mature, distance learner, full-time, day release, online – need different market orientations. So the essence of the marketing process is to understand these differing consumer needs and adapt to them.

In answer to the question ‘why market?’ we would respond that we live in a consumer environment where the fulfilment of desires, whether they are valuable or not, structures our consumption habits as informed consumers. As educators we need to get our message through the clutter of competitive consumerism. Quite simply, we need to market our contributions. Marketing is a social and managerial process through which institutions and individuals obtain what they want through creating, offering and exchanging products and services with others. The management of that process involves the planning and execution of the concept and its related manifestations such as pricing, promotion and the distribution of ideas, goods and services in such a way as to create exchanges that satisfy individual and institutional objectives. In its broadest sense, it has to influence the level, timing and composition of demand in ways that help the institution achieve its strategic objectives. In order to do this it must bring together under a marketing plan:

• an explanation of the current marketing situation so that an institution can anticipate where they might be at the end of a planned period;
• a specification of the expected results;
• an identification of the resources needed to carry on the planned activity;
• a description of the actions that are to take place so that implementation responsibilities can be assigned, and monitoring set in place to evaluate the success of any actions taken.

During the course of the book we look in turn at the five steps in the marketing management process proposed by Philip Kotler (1999) in his very readable book, Kotler on Marketing. They are research; segmentation, targeting and positioning; the mix of activity; implementation; control and iteration. This is close to a simple definition of a project management lifecycle from initiation through definition to execution and then post-implementation review. The marketing research and then positioning and activity give purpose and depth to the management of the project. The only thing we would add at this stage is the need to assess risk – what can go wrong and what would be the cost – before finally moving into the implementation stage.

Marketing is a social and managerial process but it is also, and must be, commercial. One way to help the whole process, and demystify it, is to be inclusive in its planning and implementation. Good project management teams are multidisciplinary. So are marketing project teams. Run workshops, ask for comment and input from stakeholders. Involve as many people as possible – it will pay dividends.

Strategic Marketing Partnerships

The now-ageing adage of ‘think global, act local’ has been given new impetus in education due to widening participation, increasing demand for knowledge skills and the removal of the protective barriers of time and space. Developments in information and communications technology have accelerated global collaboration and offer a springboard for future growth. Demand is clearly not just being met through the traditional university with its roots in a traditional liberal education. Recognition of the value of higher education has attracted new and less traditional students to seek higher learning, and institutions have to respond or be very sure of their existing positioning. Students want flexibility in delivery – they require online, distance learning material and programmes that match their needs rather than the needs of the programme designers, short courses, just-in-time programmes and credit towards professional recognition.

New providers are emerging into the learning environment to meet this demand, particularly in the US. Institutions like the University of Phoenix and the Western Governors University are leading the way. So have publishers like Pearson, McGraw Hill and Simon & Schuster by widening their core markets and entering into alliances with education providers. Global corporations are also reaching into areas of teaching and knowledge traditionally held to be the preserve of higher education institutions. In the US there are over 4,000 corporate ‘universities’ with their own associations grounded in an educational climate. Many actively engage in work-based learning, supported by distance learning, to offer first and higher degrees to staff to develop their skills and employability while increasing immediate productivity. In the UK, Lloyds TSB, British Telecom and British Aerospace are good examples. For example, the Motorola University gives its mission, role and objectives as follows:

Motorola University Mission

The University’s mission is to be a catalyst for change and continuous improvement in support of the corporation’s business objectives. We will provide for our clients the best value in leading edge training and education solutions and systems to be their preferred partner in developing a Best in Class work force.

Motorola University Role

Motorola University began in 1981 as the Motorola Training and Education Centre. During the eighties, Motorola University’s charter was to help the corporation build a quality culture. The eighties also saw the establishment of corporate-wide training plans and training investment policies. By the end of the decade, the University had expanded its operations both in the United States and around the world. Motorola University also began offering new and more comprehensive services, such as applications consulting.

Since 1990, Motorola University has diversified further, establishing academic partnerships with institutions around the world. During a globalization process, the University has also implemented cultural design and translation services. Currently, Motorola requires a minimum of 40 hours a year of job-relevant training and education for every associate.

Motorola University is the strategic learning organisation of the corporation, complementing the training that takes place in Motorola’s business groups. Motorola University is organised into regions and colleges with design teams to serve its customer base efficiently. The University manages 7 learning facilities around the world and has 20 offices in 13 countries on 5 continents.

Motorola University is staffed with a work force of 400 professionals. A flexi-force of 700 writers, developers, translators, and instructors provide services on an as-needed basis.

Motorola University Objectives

The University’s objectives are to provide training and education to all Motorola employees to prepare them to be Best in Class in the industry; to serve as a catalyst for change and continuous improvement to position the corporation for the future; and to provide added value to Motorola in the marketing and distribution of products throughout the world.

Of course, many use the term ‘university’ seeking only to raise the status of their own programmes and many act as agents or in partnership with colleges and universities. Indeed the use of the terms ‘university’ and ‘college’ are in themselves problematic because many of what were the defining features are now shared by other institutions. Competition for lifelong learning provision from the private sector will continue. People may start to question what sets a university as an educational establishment apart from a corporate learning en...