June 3, 2008
Should Colleges Sell Ads to Pay for New Technology?
This might upset you: You log onto your university library Web site to research a history assignment, and alongside the literature citations there is an ad for Dell computers or Microsoft Office or several books from university presses.
It’s not happening yet, but it’s one scenario pictured by Martin Weller this week in his post on the blog The Ed Techie as he wonders how to pay for technology that students and universities need.
Mr. Weller, a professor of educational technology at Open University in the U.K., starts with the now-accepted fact that funding is flat, yet demands and costs for technology in education keep going up. How, then, to pay for it?
— Ads on university sites?
— Charging students for tech support or accreditation?
— Giving students government-subsidized vouchers?
— Charging companies, not students, for professional development courses?
Mr. Weller is not recommending (or disavowing) these strategies, but he suggests they may not be avoidable. “Even putting the words business and education in the same sentence is heresy for some, and yet I think we will face some very difficult choices in this area,” he says.—Josh Fischman
Posted on Tuesday June 3, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Why not? They’ve been selling ads in the form of building, room and field names for years…
— db Jun 3, 10:40 AM #
db: naming a thing for a donor is really nothing like an ad.
That said, I work at a horrifically underfunded college, and I’d consider just about any funding option that didn’t substantially compromise the college’s ethics, including running ads on our student focused web site (or portal, if we had the funding for one).
— Kyle Johnson Jun 3, 12:45 PM #
I think that if the quality of education isnt’ affected, I don’t see anything wrong with this being done on some parts of the websites.
— Eliot Jun 3, 01:57 PM #
I work at a public university and I’m for it. As the old saying goes, we long ago decided what we are, the only thing we negotiate is price. The states and feds don’t support higher ed anymore, so we might as well ask Microsoft and GM to do it.
— Al Jun 3, 05:58 PM #
First stage: get rid of expensive Microsoft products and operating systems and go Linux and OpenSource and enjoy the economies. Second stage: only run ethical ads.
— Dave Postles Jun 4, 06:10 AM #
One caveat: Someone has to give careful thought to whether the ad is appropriate in a college context. Some years ago our office (which handles academic advising for some 6500 undergrads) started using an email program that came bundled with a package that included on-screen popup advertisements for Visa (the credit card company). As long as the application was open, the little pop-up couldn’t be removed – it could only be shifted around on the screen.
Given undergrads’ sometimes terrible problems with easy credit and crushing debt, I found this an unacceptable thing to have sitting on my screen as I talked to my advisees, so I didn’t use the application. It was eventually replaced.
— Niel McDowell Jun 4, 08:41 AM #
Yeah, Dave, that’s the ticket— dump Microsoft for Linux….and about as many people who read your crummy research will use the technology.
— Big Bill Jun 4, 08:48 AM #
Universities were the first institutions (outside of the military) to embrace the internet. I agree that they now need to embrace open source and the new platform that is the web and get away from expensive software programs, etc.
That said, ethical ads (i.e. NOT fast food or credit companies) could actually help an institution in more ways than funding. What if school organizations could use some of their protected student activity fees to place ads for events? The money is then simply recycled, moving over into university coffers to be spent on technology and therefore benefitting the student body two-fold.
— Kirsten McKinney Jun 4, 09:01 AM #
If you’re at a public institution that receives government funds would it be legal to sell ads? I think the commercial publications and web sites would scream that public universities have an unfair advantage because of their government (aka tax payer) funding.
— Junio1r Jun 4, 09:30 AM #
With the end of the budget year approaching, the topic is defintiely in the air.
I’ve just release the results of a survey about advertising in electronic and print publications in higher education.
— Karine Joly Jun 4, 09:58 AM #
The first paragraph of this post combined with a lunch-time discussion with a colleague yesterday inspired some thoughts on paid placement of advertisements in library search results on my own blog. I am still vaguely uncomfortable with the concept, but Martin’s post does point to a need to at least think about “pragmatic responses.”
— Peter Murray Jun 4, 11:33 AM #
On our library web site, we display a rotation of “featured connections” which are essentially ads for selected databases. So we are paying for databases and providing free advertising for them. We ought to negotiate for a price reduction for databases we promote, but I don’t believe we’ve tried it.
— Reba Leiding Jun 12, 09:16 AM #