April 19, 2013, 2:01 pm
By Lee Gardner
Colleges may still be unsettled by the prospect of MOOCs, but they are increasingly comfortable with another Web-based game-changer: social media.
On Thursday the Council for Advancement and Support of Education released its latest annual survey of social-media use by colleges, with more than 1,000 institutions responding. (The full results are here.) Colleges may be more social-media savvy, perhaps even social-media dependent, but at most colleges it’s still something employees do on the side.
Not surprisingly, the two most popular social media used by colleges over all remain Facebook (used by 96 percent) and Twitter (82 percent). The use of the photo-sharing site Flickr has declined, from 51 percent in 2012 to 38 percent this year. While colleges have begun to use newer (and younger-skewing) social media such as Instagram and Tumblr, which were not included in the CASE survey…
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March 20, 2013, 3:07 pm
By Lee Gardner
Three weeks after introducing an updated costume for its Sparky the Sun Devil mascot, Arizona State University is going back to the drawing board for a new new look—this one to be determined by popular vote.
Last week the university was still playing down the protests against the new mascot costume, rolled out on March 1. ASU attributed the outcry against the anime-ish redesign to a small but vocal minority of students, alumni, and fans whose displeasure was amplified by social media.
But on Tuesday the university announced that it would redesign the mascot costume’s head based on the votes of “members of the Sun Devil community,” according to a written statement. The new new look will be unveiled at Arizona State’s first football game this fall.
Software is being designed to allow those on the university’s mailing list to vote online in about four weeks on specific features…
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March 12, 2013, 1:19 am
By Lee Gardner
The new Sparky (right) got his look as part of a campaign to attract younger fans. (Photo courtesy Arizona State U.)
Some of the early buzz on the new look for Sparky, the Arizona State University Sun Devils’ mascot, has been, well, diabolical.
“Creepy” has popped up several times since its unveiling, on March 1.
“Sparky looks like he is on meth,” one Internet commenter offered.
“It’s like a cross between Jafar from ‘Aladdin’ and the honey bee from the Honey Nut Cheerios commercials, with a little bit of Buzz Lightyear thrown in,” the ASU State Press opined.
Even worse, as far as some students and alumni are concerned, “none of the stakeholders were brought up to date that this was coming,” said Shaun Bainbridge, a 2000 graduate who is president of an ASU alumni group in Colorado and one of the…
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February 6, 2013, 3:12 pm
By Goldie Blumenstyk
“I am a Phoenix” is no more. The once-ubiquitous TV commercials touting student and faculty pride in the University of Phoenix have been replaced by a new ad campaign that its marketers hope will “project a hopeful, positive message for America.” It’s also designed to lay the ground for what one university executive called “a massive repositioning” of the institution.
The new ad push is hardly surprising. As The Chronicle reported this week, Phoenix and just about every other major for-profit college are scrambling to reverse more than a year and a half of enrollment declines.
Phoenix’s new “Let’s Get to Work” campaign, showcased here on the university’s YouTube feed, reflects market research that found that many Phoenix students don’t enroll for a degree per se. “They come,” said Barry Feierstein, the university’s chief operating officer, “for what the degree will do for them.”
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