January 4, 2008
U. of Illinois' Online Education Project Has Marketing Problems
“It’s important for people not to focus on the doggone numbers.” The speaker was not a campaign manager explaining a presidential candidate’s poor showing in Iowa last night. Rather it was U. of Illinois special assistant Chet Gardner, explaining the poor enrollment in the university’s new Global Campus online education project to the Chicago Tribune yesterday.
The doggone numbers showed fewer than 15 students enrolled in the much-anticipated program, which opened its virtual doors on Wednesday. Initial enrollment had been projected at 75, and the multi-million program is supposed to teach more than 9,000 students by 2012.
Mr. Gardner emphasized those goals were still within reach, and the important fact is that the university got the program rolling. It had been delayed by four months while the institution’s Board of Trustees debated over financing and fees, not giving final approval until the end of July.
That left precious little time for marketing and recruiting students, Mr. Gardner said. That effort didn’t start until October, and the first courses began January 2. As new offerings are rolled out later this spring, and publicity builds, the university expects the students—people who can’t get to the physical campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago, and Springfield—will follow.—Josh Fischman
Posted on Friday January 4, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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I’m not sure there’s much mystery here or much of a story, either. You can’t start marketing an educational program in October and expect to fill seats by January 1. There’s a much longer decision cycle to selecting any educational experience, whether online or otherwise.
Vicky Phillips
Chief Ed Analyst
GetEducated.com, LLC
— Vicky Phillips Jan 6, 03:17 PM #
Phillips is exactly right. Know any higher education institution in the world that enrolled fully any academic program with a lead time from start of a couple of months? Heard of marketing? Heard of the time and financial cost of marketing? Heard of having a great product but paying time and money to inform people when and where this great product exists? People NOT choosing a program they have NOT ever heard of are NOT rejecting the product—they are merely uninformed that it EXISTS.
This bit of “news” is really about the low educational level of reporters, the financial incentives pushing media to come up with “news” all the time, and the human shadenfreude of enjoying the flaws of others. Combine all these and you get premature “stories” about how things that have barely begun have “already” failed. If husbands and wives judged marriages this way, if bosses judged employees this way, if parents judged kids this way, the world would have no population at all, the apes would have it.
This is an article about the need to improve academic quality of journalism programs.
— Richard Tabor Greene Jan 7, 06:29 AM #