On the marketing of colleges

Some will argue that, at long last, non-profit colleges have joined the real world—one that computer, truck-driving, and other proprietary schools have inhabited for a long time. But many colleges now use promotional tactics that are downright dishonest. A number of students—especially foreigners—are being deceived and getting hurt. Before we reach the point where Harvard is advertising on matchbook covers, we should probably consider whether selling education is significantly different from selling cars or soap.

Perhaps you are nodding your head in agreement as you read this.  Guess when this essay is from?  October 1979.  Yes, thirty years ago was this argument articulated in the Atlantic--by "Edward B. Fiske, formerly the Education Editor of The New York Times, is the author of The Fiske Guide to Colleges, an annual publication of Sourcebooks, Inc."

There is more--and they are so much the case even today.  For instance, Fiske's comment that:

One result of the new professionalism in college advertising is that promotional brochures are beginning to look like cigarette ads. A College of St. Elizabeth brochure, for example, shows a girl with long blond hair lying in a field of flowers and holding one gently in her hand while staring wistfully into the camera's eye. "Especially for women," reads the italic caption underneath, "because women are creative, intelligent and beautiful, resourceful and sweet and generally different from men."

Or how about this one?

Colleges plainly have to adjust their programs to meet changing student needs. But some serious problems are becoming apparent in the headlong rush to embrace the latest marketing strategies of the corporate world.

The most obvious problem is the abuse of simple truth, a virtue with which colleges have often presumed to identify themselves in the past. Many recruiters of foreign students routinely mislead about the programs, reputation, and even the geographical climate of the institutions they represent; but not all such incidents occur across the seas. One Indiana school put out a catalogue picturing a boy and a girl strolling hand in hand past a waterfall, though no waterfall of that sort can be found within miles of the campus.

Truth in advertising?  What was Fiske smoking to ask for that? :-)  And truth in academia?  Hello?  That is a contradiction!!! 
Finally, Fiske writes:

An obvious danger is sacrificing quality in the all-out effort to maintain enrollments and adjust programs to meet a perceived academic need—or at least a market. John Sawhill, the president of New York University, wonders whether colleges will ever flunk students in whose recruitment they have invested so much time, effort, and money. "You have to remember that the end result of education is a degree or a certificate, and that awarding this is a selective process," he commented. "You do have to evaluate students. If you engage in too big a selling effort to get them in, it makes it difficult to evaluate them when you're ready to give the degree."

There is also the danger that the new marketing fad could backfire and lead to greater governmental regulation. "If colleges begin to act like businesses, they will be treated as businesses," observed Arthur Levine, who recently shepherded an eighty-six-page report for the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education which criticized, among other things, "inflated and misleading advertising" among colleges and universities today. "If they act as hucksters, they will be treated as hucksters.... Neither businesses, nor hucksters, can successfully wear the mantle of academic freedom or autonomy from social control."

The consumer movement in higher education is welcome—in many ways. It has led to substantial improvements in the accuracy and usefulness of information in college catalogues. But it has the potential of pushing the "buyer-seller" analogy too far.