University of Waterloo Waterloo: future Highered marketing
by Jesse Rodgers
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Did marketing drive the coming meltdown in higher ed?
Seth Godin has an interesting post, The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer), where he focuses pretty strongly on the games being played in higher education to attract students and justify the huge relative increase in the cost of higher ed. Four of his five points are what everyone sees and I tend to agree. The marketing material designed to push people to apply and then (in the US) the more applications you reject the higher your rankings feeds back into the marketing material. I think that is a bit of a over-simplification of rankings but I completely agree the rankings game is one big driver of the madness in marketing.
His point on accreditation (his fifth point) has a big hole in it but there is something to this:
Back before the digital revolution, access to information was an issue. The size of the library mattered. One reason to go to college was to get access. Today, that access is worth a lot less. The valuable things people take away from college are interactions with great minds (usually professors who actually teach and actually care) and non-class activities that shape them as people. The question I’d ask: is the money that mass-marketing colleges are spending on marketing themselves and scaling themselves well spent? Are they organizing for changing lives or for ranking high? Does NYU have to get so much bigger? Why?
The access to the information might not be the value of higher education anymore but learning how to make proper sense of that information and evaluate it properly certainly is something that is very hard to learn outside of higher education. In addition to that, creating new high quality information is something academics are born to do. Certainly a lot of it is noise but nothing like the noise that I am contributing to with this blog post*. The other part, does an institution need to get bigger? Yes. But only if it is growing to build its research and commercialization activities in my mind.
For those that don’t get why we need higher ed, it comes down to who you want to rely on doing your research and driving our society in the future. Currently companies like IBM, Microsoft, Dow, 3M, etc are doing all the research in closed environments with profit as their motivation. Higher education institutions have tried to keep pace but the facilities are expensive and the space required is hard to come by for labs. Most research in higher education is open (once published) with a clear way for people to replicate the results (in Science at least). Engineers take the science, add a bit of their own, and put things together. Arts looks and how people interact with it. With marketing folks and MBAs (with the best intentions) driving the fix for the money/space problem by attracting more students the priorities of the institution appeared to have lost their way.
I agree with Seth Godin but I think a meltdown is a tad dramatic. I can see a shift back towards research and experience in Ontario at the very least. There is a recognition that the experience is what students are looking for and the research (along with commercialization of some research) is what could generate the revenue instead of tuition increases.
Like a recession, by the time you identify it you are already in the middle of it. A shift is happening, not a meltdown, but I think how much power/influence marketing folks have on the institution will diminish and the emphasis will go to the story tellers that share what value and experience really is in higher ed.
*yes there are lots of generalizations in here but I am not writing a research paper 
A talk on business productivity
Yesterday I had the oppertunity to participate (a little) on a panel hosted at the Accelerator Centre that was to talk about the opportunities for Canadian Businesses to boost their productivity. Other panel members were:
- Dr. Sherry Cooper, Chief Economist, BMO Capital Markets
- Tom Jenkins, Executive Chair and Chief Strategy Officer, Open Text
- Paul Summers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Clemmer SteelCraft Technologies Incorporated
- Mike Klopchic, District Vice President, BMO Bank of Montreal
- Moderator: Iain Klugman, Chief Executive Officer, Communitech
The discussion was opened by a report from Dr. Sherry Cooper that covers the very high view of productivity and opportunity in Canada. Essentially we have closed the gap or are leading in most categories over the US but productivity is low (or measured in a way that makes it seem low). From the discussion an important bit of information was brought up that essentially said the numbers are deceiving because the way it is measured is likely skewed by combination of things like the rising Canadian dollar.
Fascinating stuff. Encouraging stuff. Dr. Cooper sees Canada in an extremely strong position economically for a number of reasons ranging from having the strongest banking system to having had only a mild recession compared to everyone else. A position it arguably has never seen itself in before.
We have some weaknesses however: attracting, retaining, and building talent.
Tom Jenkins brought the discussion to investing in people, the number of positions open locally, and the importance of that. Paul Summers (a very interesting and understated local business leader) made the point that he has ~350 staff, most of their business is in the US, and just in time manufacturing is difficult when all your product has to cross the Peace Bridge. He believes the talent is here, equipment is a minor expense, and overall he weathered the recession quite well.
My contribution: Waterloo has the talent at the University but everyone else knows it. Getting those students engaged locally is key and that is where VeloCity fits. A point I didn’t bring up is that the same talent Tom Jenkins is trying to bring to Open Text is attracted to a lot of the same things the students are: local culture, more urbanized environments, social life, etc. The other thing students and professionals are interested in is something Dr. Cooper mentioned as a strength the US has — specialized economic zones that are full of opportunity in a general professional area. The opportunity in those areas is that people can switch jobs, build expertise, and spread knowledge throughout the area without having to uproot everything.
What I think? Investment in productivity is less about the organization and more about the community. Invest in the infrastructure, build strong economic cores, and highlight diverse cultural development on the local level.
I didn’t contribute a lot to the talk. Four opinionated people with two extremely high level people amongst them with only an hour is hardly a place to get into a deep conversation where I might get more than my 0.02 into. However I think it was great of Dr. Sherry Cooper to take the time to explain her vision of the state of Canada and Tom Jenkins for defending the Canadian work ethic and way of life.
Some VeloCity lessons
It is quickly closing on a year that I have been directly involved with VeloCity as an Associate Director. In that year (which is just three terms) we have tried some different things based on a few assumptions that came from observations of the previous two terms:
- All 70 students are not entrepreneurs but pretty much all of them are interested.
- We will never have 100% participation of residents.
- Priorities with most students are #1 Academics, #2 Co-op jobs, #3 is where VeloCity should fit!
- You can not build a product in four months, part-time.
- We are building a farm team of entrepreneurs where a few are ready for the pros early… not all.
Initially the recipe for a term looking like this: a conference to open the term (VeloCity 101), speakers/mentors scattered throughout, an exhibition to show off the things people were working on with a pitch competition. There was nothing wrong with that recipe but feedback was rolling in that asked for more structure and the attendance for speakers was dropping as the term went on. Many teams were also working on projects like they were assignments and not really putting a full term of effort in. That didn’t mean there weren’t some great successes but as Virginia and I were brought in we wanted to see if there was a better way to get more people feeling they are benefiting from VeloCity.
Looking at each term
Where the changes started was in the Spring 2009 term were we changed the project exhibition to a DemoCamp style event and BBQ at the residence. That worked out pretty well considering we had fewer students in the residence than the other two terms and it was a bit more fun but it isn’t something we can do in the fall or winter terms as there is usually snow where the BBQ should be. We had some great demos and ended the term thinking it was pretty good considering it was Summer in Waterloo.
Fall 2009 was more of a ‘typical’ term where focus was on speakers/mentors, VeloCity 101, and a project exhibition. More work was done to get students to community events but only a few seemed interested in participating. The Fall 2009 term was probably the most discouraging term as we really started to see that VeloCity didn’t even get to the #3 spot on priorities for most students. However we did have a couple bright sparks and we focused our energy on there. A more drastic tweak was needed, enter the ‘first two weeks’ plan.
In the Winter of 2010 we launch the term with a much more aggressive approach. The first week had evening brainstorming events followed by a StartupWeekend style event that saw 13 teams work on ideas. The following weekend was VeloCity 101 which had some speakers followed by a DemoCamp style afternoon where the teams pitched their products and received feedback. The rest of the term focused less on bringing in speakers and more on supporting any of the teams with their progress. We closed the term with a project exhibition that only had seven teams present (a few more couldn’t make that day so around nine of the thirteen were still working on things).
Other things we did differently in the Winter term:
- During each of these terms were also trying to understand the balance that the Housing and Residence ‘Res Life’ program has with things. What really helped with this Winter 2010 term was the balance worked out extremely well withe Dons running a load of social events.
- We hired a Community Manager that lives in the residence — huge amount of help putting an official VeloCity staff member in the residence when students are around (at night).
The feedback and engagement with the winter 2010 terms says we got it right. There was a BBQ last night put on by the Dons that had 40+ students attending, chatting, and smiling. We had 50/70 associated with a team and probably a few more at least gave something a try.
What is next for VeloCity?
Spring 2010 terms sees the final piece of our change strategy with the introduction of the VeloCity Entrepreneur Bootcamp. We will be running the brainstorming with the weekend focused on building out a feature to test a larger product idea with the pitching happening on the Sunday afternoon with a BBQ. Then on each Monday evening of the term we have essentially a course being lead by local tech leaders and business folks. This is something we hope will set our pattern for a number of terms in the future.
We have a few more plans for the future as well. Looking forward to sharing that
The most important asset in higher ed?
In what I can only assume is an individual’s attempt and negotiation posturing on behalf of the Faculty Association we see some underlying organizational cultural beliefs bubbling to the service. As covered in the Daily Bulletin today:
Metin Renksizbulut, chair of the FAUW compensation committee, gives his report on how salary negotiations have been interrupted by the Ontario pay freeze. Renksizbulut sent an e-mail memo to association members yesterday assuring them that faculty “are exempt from the provisions” of the freeze, and “we hope that the Administration will voluntarily agree.” He added that the university’s budget is “not in trouble”, especially with new millions arriving for expanded enrolment: “Budget making is all about the expenditure priorities of the budget maker. I leave it to you to assess how much priority this university should assign to its most important asset, the faculty.”
There are few messages in here that I could take away from this:
- Some faculty believe that the administration at UW is playing a shell game with the budget.
- Some faculty are better than anyone else in the province at understanding what the heck the ruling government in Ontario intends with its short-sited legislation on salary.
- Some faculty believe they are the most important asset at the university.
Doug Dye, the current UW Staff Association President, placed his thoughts on UW Opinion:
To publicly and openly delcare something like this is extremely arrogant and I hope that most faculty on campus do not share his sentiment. UW does not have one single most important asset, when one group ceases to function the university as a whole is affected. For one group to seek gain for itself at the possible expense of other groups on campus is a shameful thing.
Well said Doug.
My personal feelings are that if we are to play the “most important asset” game I would hand that title to the students (current/past/future) but even that would be unfair. Universities are complex organizations where no one piece could do what it does without the other. We often forget how connected things are and I am thankful for the odd flame war that may erupt that gives us a chance to really think about it.
As for the other messages I took from Metin’s memo, he is certainly welcome to his opinion but if we can’t trust the leaders of this place to do their jobs then we will spend far too much time worrying about what might be and not doing anything towards what we want this place to be.