Is higher education worth the money?
What is the image that pop up in your mind when talk about higher education?
Prohibitively expensive?
Ranking system?
Life change opportunity?
Ivory tower?
Have positives and negatives?
As a consumer of higher education, I have a lot of faith in the high education but also a lot of complaints. So it is good to have professor David Demarest to help me decipher the narratives of higher education and what we should do about it.
Professor David Demarest has over 30 years of experience in crisis communication, political communication and has done extensive research on reputation management of higher education.
So what are the current narratives of higher education?
All the previous image you had about higher education still hold true in our current environment; the good news is that higher education is still perceived valuable for individual success and the wellbeing of society. But the outside world also presents some warning signals. The trust in institutions is in serious decline worldwide, especially in US and UK. Given the current rising trends of online education, more people start to believe that anyone can be as informative as the experts if given access to information.
So what can we do about the reputation management in higher education?
Turns out there is a formula in success for political campaign that can also be applied in the reputation management of higher education: Research+Right strategy+Right tactics = Success. You need to frontload your efforts to understand the context. If you did a poor job in research, your strategy will reflect it, you won’t have the right strategy, then you won’t have the right tactics.
Of course, the reputation management goes hand in hand with crisis communication. The recent “Me too” movement and calls for diversity and inclusion forced some high-level faculty to resign. The USC medical school dean resigned due to sexual harassment claims, the Mississippi University football coach resigned after his call for escort came into light. Even for Stanford, the Brock Turner sexual assault case is constantly reported as “Stanford Swimmer Case” which tarnish the reputation of this prestige school. So what shall we do about it? Professor Demarest shared with us the Worst Out The First Rule. Get the worst information the first, even though leaders tend to resist it the most.
Now come back to us, based on the recent survey and researches about Stanford community, we should have confidence to wrestle with the narratives.
Some key messages to keep in mind:
82% Stanford students graduate with zero debts
The remaining 18% students ends up with on average 120k
The most positive message and hard to believe message are the financial aids and debts statements. This also helps to sweep away the heresy that college costs too much and deliver too little. Most alumni did agree that the degree is the very currency that they trade in the realm of reality, the job market.
How can we do a better job to promote our reputation? Especially for Stanford?
Well, some food for thoughts:
Are we self-reflective enough?
Are any narrative fits for Stanford?
Are we shifting the attitudes towards “value for money”?
Some useful techniques for building the reputation for Stanford
Empower story-telling from alumni community
Build a communication platform with the outside world
Bridge direct connection between different groups (race, gender, political beliefs)
Use multiple social platform to generate the momentum
Invite third party validation
So what is your take on higher education? Look forward to hear your thoughts in the comment session!
