HE Marketing Survey

Hello all,

Further to Paul's email, I wanted to invite suggestions from HE marketing theorists and Practitioners on content & themes for the survey. There are two databases we can use; the first is pre-applicants and the second is applicants. Pre-applicants are 16-17 year olds  who are interested in going to HE but have not yet applied. Applicants would be applicants to the 2013 cycle and could be potentially be split bu Home/EU and International.

We already have some research on learner decision making which I can share when we meet,  which may help shape some of the questions. Obviously this has the potential of running away and becoming too big but I suggest first stab is see if there are common areas of interest for study.

Finally if I don't get a chance to speak to you all further, have a wonderful Christmas Holiday and I  look forward to picking this up with you in the New Year!

Communications

How can we make this work?  We have the AMA, HEERA, CIM and CASE.
 Anyone couple be an outlet for our research.  There are a number of journals as well.

Should we find other ways to meet?  

Research Funding

A big project?  An evaluation of higher education marketing, its spend and it reach within universities?
How do we make education, transformation or what is lost if we package jobs

WELCOME AND LETS GET GOING

Dear Colleagues

Thanks for expressing interest in the ideas expressed in my email.

If I unpack a couple of the ideas behind the paper we might be able to begin a conversation

My first premise is that education is not a service nor a product but an ontological journey of transformation.  Its  intent is education to enable studens to take a stance on what they want to become and how that might be achieved.  It thus sees education as the primary goal of a good life which informs life decisions such as careers. 

The second premise, and perhaps the most important, is that marketing has achieved a lot in sustaining markets but has not been developed to support or shape, a transformative engagement as indicated above.  Perhaps religious or political marketing is the closest but that is also problematic.  Adopting marketing derived from fmcg for things that has deferent time horizons ought to require new thoughts

Premise three follows in that we are  looking a the edifying process which should not be placed into a category of service or product but treated as an entity in its own right.  It is here that I see that we have major challenge to learning from a marketing – not just a promotion – in building culture that favours higher.

Premise four, well simply, this is important work for the education sector.

So as I see the agenda we need to take what we know about higher education and marketing, set a goal for marketing within this context and devise something – ‘edifeting’ (please improve) which does not set out to commoditise education for the purposes of the market but liberate it through a new language and practices.

I also thought that those who want to get involved in this project or any other in higher education marketing project and want this to lead to a Masters or Doctorate degree could do so by having others in the group act as research supervisors.  My university offer practitioner research degrees as I am sure other do as well.  Also it may bring together researchers to write together and publish in journals such as the Journal of Marketing Higher Education and attend conference offered by the various interest groups.  Perhaps those who have published in this area could circulate one of two of their papers or articles which they feel might help in the discussion.

Jane and Izhal’s paper attach, although a little out of date, (as she told me) does set an agenda in a more concrete way and is worth a read if you have not yet done so.  It also focuses the international or global context of our work

So where next?

Could we start by offering our views on why marketing is important to higher education from an educational perspective?  Also what have marketing’s main achievements  been for education  and well, anything else you want to talk about!  Funding ideas?

My colleague Nico Pizzolato is helping me set up a blog for use to communicate.  Given my slowness it will be ready by Wednesday next week and you will receive a communication to join.

I hope you have a good weekend

Best

Paul

Research Degrees

Practice based degrees in the workplace based on actual work projects.  anyone interested?  This group could act as supervisors and build a cohort