BRAND POWER

'I don't like being treated like an idiot.'

Third-year IT student, University of South Australia

'Marketing is just a stupid necessity. It didn't help me at all; in fact, it got in the way. All I wanted to know was stuff about the course, not all the bullshit. But it did tell me about university priorities, which boil down to money, money, money. It's just not an intelligent way to treat students.'

First-year IT student, University of Queensland

'So, here's the problem for universities. They can change their marketing messages, but these will make no difference in attracting good students if the messages can't be backed up.'

'Third degree', The Age, April 2012

CAN I INTEREST YOU IN ...?

As quasi-businesses immersed in a cutthroat global competition, universities have over recent years taken on many of the characteristics of the corporate world. Key to securing 'market share' in this treacherous environment is the colourful practice of marketing: a highly creative activity devoted chiefly to projecting alluring dreams and illusions to a vast pool of choice-laden consumers. In so doing, says US commentator Thomas Frank, universities become (at least in the minds of its promoters) commercial agents of 'wish fulfilment and infinite possibility'.

The importance of peddling such fantasies should not be underestimated: a successful marketing campaign can make the difference between institutional stagnation and rapid expansion, especially since student enrolments remain the financial lifeblood of today's universities. And that's precisely why each of Australia's universities spend large sums on employing salary-packaged directors, whose job it is to oversee multifarious 'external' activities, including marketing. Most university marketing divisions are made up of a swag of specialist personnel (many of them recruited from private companies) who are responsible for developing (or outsourcing) campaign slogans, strap lines, tag-lines, mottos, vision statements and other forms of beguiling blurb. These outpourings find their way into glossy brochures, newspaper and magazine ads, websites and social media, and onto TV and cinema screens.

The success or otherwise of these offerings is 'tracked' by eagle-eyed market researchers who fix their empirical gaze onto prospective students from the point of initial inquiry right through to enrolment, and often beyond. Numerous surveys and focus groups are also conducted to identify the purchasing habits and preferences of today's tertiary shoppers. As one marketing head at a Queensland university told me, this focused attention on anyone who shows even the slightest interest in a course is essential to the 'collateral design' of marketing ephemera, the ultimate purpose of which is 'competitive differentiation' from one's equally inventive competitors. 'Shifting markets,' I was further informed, 'r