“American higher education is being transformed by the power and ethics of the marketplace,” said David Kirp, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education. He and Ellen Hall, vice president for academic affairs at Wells College (NY), closed the conference with a conversation about how market forces have reshaped so much of higher education—from the way faculty members are hired to the ways students are recruited, from ties with business and industry to the uses of the Internet.
     Hall asked Kirp how CIC colleges could balance their desire to honor academic values but still compete for students and increase revenue. Kirp said, “CIC schools are competing with each other and with for-profit institutions. Their task is to know their product—who they are, what they’re good at, as well as their fundamental values and core competencies—and then figure out ways of getting their messages out to the market.”
     To Hall’s question about leadership—can small colleges succeed without a strong leader who understands the marketplace—Kirp answered “No.” He cited Dickinson College as an example of an institution that brought in a new president who had worked in the for-profit sector, and turned the school around. “He was on-message, knew the life of Dickinson, redesigned the logo and entry gate, brought in the nation’s best enrollment manager and gave him power, and shared a set of core values. Although the faculty grumbled, his efforts worked because he had a sense of the academic life of the institution and of pastoral care of the students,” Kirp said. “A leader who can figure out particular opportunities at your school is important.”
     “The question for CIC schools is how you trumpet your strengths. You have a message to sell—whether it’s your histories, or the fact that you’re an HBCU, a women’s, or a religious college. It’s important to figure out who you want to be, and how much of your history you want to shed.” Kirp added that this sector of higher education and the large, regional public institutions are most at risk from for-profit institutions. “It’s important to learn from your competition. Learn from them about the convenience they provide, how they approach potential students, and their ethics of admitting students who are clearly not going to make it through…. For-profit institutions offer a limited number of programs and small classes; the students know what classes they need; and every course is available that is listed in the catalog. They are very good at the limited range of things they offer. Their emphasis is teaching, not research. But their strength is also their weakness. They are aiming at a finite market…. It’s important not to demonize the for-profit sector, because it’s here to stay.” However, small and mid-sized private colleges and universities, “offer the ideals of intellectual growth, public service, and caring for students…. Lots of students would benefit from what you have to offer, but so many don’t even think college is a possibility.”
    During a discussion of the benefits of campuses collaborating with each other to compete in the marketplace, Kirp cited Rhodes College (TN) as an example of a school that has collaborated with other campuses in the Associated Colleges of the South to create a “virtual department of classics.” This was in 1999, during the dot-com era, he explained, and the colleges as a group capitalized on the potential of the Internet. “It was a tool that each of them could use to give their students the kind of first-rate education that none of these colleges could afford to offer on its own.” It’s a “nice model” and provides “a much livelier academic life than any single faculty member could offer,” he said, adding that “you could all benefit by collaborating with other institutions to offer such courses and better compete with the for-profit sector.”
    The bottom line, he concluded: “Know your product; trumpet your strengths.”
Kirp’s book, Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, published by Harvard University Press, is available through bookstores nationwide.