President and VPs

I’m currently working on my next column for University Business to be published in February 2009. This article will present 10 very practical tips to do more (or as well) with less (budget, people, time, etc), which explains why my main focus lately has been on the economic downturn and its consequences for higher education.

Even though economic crises can usually translate into positive outcomes (increased enrollment with many laid-off workers going back to college to upgrade their skill set), I have serious doubts about it in this specific case.

Didn’t the whole thing started with a financing meltdown?

The New York Times seems to agree with me today (not personally, but still) on this point in an article about a recently released report, article published today on its website: “College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.”

The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the annual report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve all started to feel the pinch that is going to spread to our profession and industry. But, I’m wondering if you’ve already been asked to work on a similar type of the crisis communication website I stumbled upon this morning: Wesleyan’s “Securing The Future” website.

In the last update dated November 25, 2008 of this website launched in October, Wesleyan President Michael Roth even went on camera – in a short online video – to share an update about the current situation of the college budget and finances.

The website includes updates by the president, frequently asked questions and links to several posts Roth wrote about the topic on his blog, Roth on Wesleyan.

Have your top executives started to use the Web to communicate on this tough topic as well?
Do you think this is a good idea? Tell us by posting a comment.

The inauguration of John Maeda the 16th president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) will take place this Friday.

Why do I think he is the kind of presidents we have all been dreaming of?

• First, just look at his inauguration online guest book, created for the campus community to add their thoughts, best wishes, or dreams for RISD. These entries will be projected on the façade of RISD’s Chace Center Friday night.
• Maeda also blogs, like a real blogger – which is a nice departure from most president blogs, no offense intended to the former – on a group blog called Our (and Your) RISD.
  

  Our (and Your) RISD

• RISD’s new president has also a fresh take on the traditional president video message. You can find it at the top of his president web page.

  

Want to read more about Maeda? Check out “Design for Learning: RISD Gets a New Type of President,” a recent article about him published by the Wall Street Journal (via the Kept-Up Academic Librarian)

So, how technology-friendly is your university/college president?
Are there other Maeda-like presidents out there?

Please share with us all by posting a comment.

Lately, I’m suffering from a very bad case of information overload.

So many things to read…
So many things to comment on…
So many things to blog about…

It has become more and more difficult to keep up with all the interesting initiatives, discussions and happenings taking place in higher ed.

That’s why I’ve decided to try something different and challenge myself to act as a better editor by providing a regular (I’ll shoot for weekly) selection of the information you can’t afford to miss if you’re working in web, marketing and PR in higher education: “Catch up-Date with Karine.”

Published early in the week, these posts will aim at providing a short summary of the past week’s information and news that matter.

This week edition is going to be a very light – and somehow incomplete – one, but I’ll get better as I go.

Missed the keynotes at the eduWeb conference?
Mark Greenfield and I have recorded the webinar versions of our speeches:
“It’s the End of the Web as We Know It” by Mark Greenfield (56 minutes)
“It’s the Community, Stupid!” by Karine Joly (36 minutes)

Need some third-party back up to attract the attention of your stakeholders on the virtual visit?
Share the cover story of the September issue of University Business, “A Virtual Visit Welcome,” with your significant decision maker. In her article, my UB editor, Melissa Ezarik provides a good overview of the latest trends in virtual visits along with some interesting examples.

Have a Facebook page for your institution? Target the updates you sent to your “fans”
As Mike Richwalsky explained in a blog post last week, it’s now possible to target your updates by location (country, state, city), age and gender.

Don’t have a FacebookLinkedIn group for your alums yet? Go create one as new really cool features have just been implemented
I read about it first at He Types She Talks in a post written by Rachel Beanland, the director of communications in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond.
Here are the new cool features of LinkedIn Groups:
• Host discussion forums
• View a searchable list of group members
• Secure a static LinkedIn URL for your group
• Offer members the opportunity to receive daily or weekly digests of new discussion and activity

I’m officially back from my trip to Europe. I flew back yesterday and can confirm that it can take less time to come back from France than from Atlantic City (haven’t attended the eduweb conference in AC last month or heard about the journey back home for attendees? Check out this blog post to understand).

Anyway, while I’m trying to catch up with everything after almost 4 weeks without quality time at my office, I thought I would point you to a great article about/for blogging university presidents published this month in University Affairs: “Presidents who blog.”

The author of this piece, Daniel McCabe, is the editor of the alum magazine of McGill University: McGill News.

I was interviewed for this piece along with several Canadian university presidents and Bob Johnson.

In his piece, McCabe lists 5 6 tips for university presidents interested in starting a blog:

1) Be strategic: “The first thing you need to do is to sit down and write out the things you want to accomplish with your blog,” advises Ms. Joly. “Think about the kind of audience you hope to attract and write your blog for them.”

2) Be brief: Long-winded expositions and run-on sentences don’t cut it online. “Some blogs could do a better job of being web-friendly,” says Bob Johnson, a marketing consultant who advises universities on how to operate online. “Long blocks of dense text with no subheads or bullet points to scan aren’t going to be read by as many people as blogs that have short paragraphs.”

3) Be punctual: A typical mistake made by bloggers, says Mr. Johnson, is “leaving long gaps between posts.” Readers quickly lose interest if a blog offers no new content for weeks on end. While you don’t need to update it every single day, readers should have a clear sense of how often you will be posting. And once you’ve made that commitment – be it once a week or twice a month – stick to it.

4) Be informal: Adopt a conversational tone, be straightforward and avoid jargon. Steer clear of “CEO-speak” – words like “synergy” – that people rarely use in everyday conversation.

5) Be open to responses: A blog is a two-way communications tool, notes Ms. Joly. Readers should be able to post responses to what you are writing. Comments make for a more vibrant blog and allow the blogger to take the pulse of the community on certain issues: “It can be like a town hall.” But she advises not to allow comments to be posted automatically. Before posting them, make sure the comments relate to topics under discussion and don’t contain libelous statements.

6) Be interesting: Nobody has to read your blog if they don’t want to, so why should they? What is it about your job that you find compelling? Who are the most intriguing people you get to meet? Write about them and not about yesterday’s press conference that you yourself found awfully dull.

Do you think presidents should blog? Have you come across a really good blog written by a university/college president? Tell us by posting a comment!

Happy Independence Day to my readers in the US!

If you’re looking for independence, a new job (or a new skilled team member) might be the way to go (I know that’s kind of a lame transition).

It’s been a few months since I decided to work on a better solution than the Higher Ed Experts forum to help the community on the job front.

Well, today I’ve just had the time necessary to complete this project (weird what I would do when I procrastinate on my presentation and webinar scheduling duties ;-) and I need your help to get things started by posting your job ads or by pointing hiring managers in your institution to this new free resource available at www.higheredexperts.com/work.

Post a new job / higheredexperts.com/work

I hope you find this new FREE service helpful.

I’ll be sending an email to the +1,400 members of Higher Ed Experts next week to announce it, so your job postings will be seen by many qualified professionals working in higher education.

What I really love about this application is that you can actually subscribe to the new job postings via RSS.

My third UB column for 2008 is now available in the June issue as well as online: “Magazines: Gone Digital, Going Paperless?”

You’ll find in this column 4 tips from several of your peers (including Karl Bates from Duke University and Bonny Griffith from Ithaca College) to get you started.

With the help of this blog’s readers and the members of Higher Ed Experts, I’ve also compiled a list of some good examples of digital magazines/newsletters published by higher ed institutions.

You can find this list – that I’ll keep updating (send your links to karine@collegewebeditor.com) – at www.collegewebeditor.com/digitalmags.

If you want to learn more about the topic, you should also consider attending “Stop the Presses: Why and How to Go Digital with your Magazine,” a 3-webinar series scheduled on June 24, 25 & 26, 2008. For more information and to register, just visit www.higheredexperts.com/stopthepresses.

By the way, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

Some of you might remember that a few weeks ago I conducted an online survey to find out if and how paid advertising and sponsorship are used in magazines and newsletters published by universities and colleges.

A total of 110 professionals working in institutions representing more than 1.5 million students completed this online survey between April 22 and May 12, 2008.

The survey was completed by people working in marketing/communications (69%), web (7%), alum associations (3%) and other offices.

43% of the respondents indicated working in private non-profit 4-year colleges, 38% in 4-year public colleges and 6% in public 2-year colleges. The average student population across the data was 14,408 students.

Interesting survey findings include:

• 12% of the print publications published by survey respondents include paid advertising or sponsorship.
• Survey respondents reported that revenues generated by advertising and sponsorship cover an average of 20% of their print publication’s total budget.
• The biggest challenge to launch an advertising program cited most often by survey respondents publishing an ad-supported print publication is the necessary extra workload/resources required for selling, designing, producing and billing the ads.
• Financial issues put aside, 65% of all the survey respondents think higher education publications shouldn’t include paid advertising or sponsorship.

The complete 7-page executive summary is available for free to Higher Ed Experts’ members. Just log in at www.higheredexperts.com and click on the report link listed in the “HEE reports” section.

If you’re not a member and work for a university/college, just join HEE (membership is free) at www.higheredexperts.com/register.

Yes, you’ve read my headline correctly: bloggers editing and fact checking the main media outlet covering higher education in the US.

So, what do I mean exactly?

In the past weeks, two posts from two different higher ed bloggers have questioned some of the facts reported in two different articles published by the Chronicle.

• Andy Shaindlin from Alumni Futures explained in his post “Should Universities Create Facebook-Style Social Networks?” he was interviewed and (mis)quoted for a piece published in the April 25 issue of the Chronicle and titled “Colleges Create Facebook-Style Social Networks to Reach Alumni” (subscription required):

  Despite what the article claims, I swear I did not tell the reporter that “social networking is definitely hot.”

  What’s kind of funny about it is that I was also contacted by the reporter who wrote this piece. He had found information about Elon University’s DIY social networking website (mentioned in the article) on my blog. Nothing funny here, you’re thinking. Actually, what’s funny about it is that I remember saying what was attributed to Andy a bit before tipping the reporter about what Carleton College (mentioned in the article) was doing.

• Then, Monday, Brian Niles from The Recruiting Revolution pointed out something a bit more troubling in his post “Chronicle Survey Summary Misleading”.
  Last Friday, in a post on this blog, I shared with you my surprise and doubts about the fact that podcasts were used 3 more times than email in admissions offices as a recruiting method according to The Chronicle Survey of Undergraduate Admissions Officers (subscription required). Well, Brian went a step further and contacted the Maguire Associates, the firm that conducted the survey on the behalf of the Chronicle and here’s what he found out as explained in his blog post:

  On May 2nd the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) published a summary of research done by the Maguire Associates that gave the impression that only 5% of colleges in the study utilized email as a recruiting and communication tool.

  Unfortunately, this information is very misleading – in fact, grossly inaccurate.

  In an email exchange with the two researchers who did the study, I was told today that the Chronicle summarized the answers provided in an open-ended “Other” option, in which some participants listed “Email” as an answer. Email was not one of the options to choose from.

I get edited and fact checked all the time by my readers (which is very good as I don’t have an editor to do that job on this blog – wait a minute, it’s because I’m the editor here ;-), and I really appreciate it.

What’s really interesting about these 2 small incidents is that they are indicative of a bigger trend.

Today, nobody (including your college, university or even you president) can expect mishaps, mistakes or even major crises to stay hidden or unnoticed for long, because millions of eye balls (or a dozen of keen observers) are “monitoring” your institution and can share what they uncover with the world on their blogs, via facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.

This morning, I received two emails asking if it was still possible to register for the May 7 webinar about crisis/emergency websites presented by Mike Dame from Virginia Tech (the initial registration deadline was yesterday).

As a result, I decided to postpone the registration deadline until this Friday (May 2) at 9PM ET. If you want to learn more on why and how to design a crisis/emergency web template for your institution, this webinar will help.

Institutions registered for this series include:

• Alfred University
• Appalachian State University
• Augusta State University
• Cape Fear Community College
• Christopher Newport University
• Colorado State University
• Grant MacEwan College
• Hiram College
• Kettering University
• Lesley University
• Lynn University
• Michigan State University
• Plymouth State University
• St Norbert College
• State University of NY at New Paltz
• Texas Christian University
• Texas Tech University
• The University of Melbourne
• Univ of Tennessee Health Science Center
• University of Alaska Fairbanks
• University of Delaware
• University of Florida
• Upper Iowa University
• West Chester University

For more information and to register online, just go to www.higheredexperts.com/911website

And, if you have any problems or issues, just send me an email at karine@collegewebeditor.com

I’ve put together a short online survey to find out if and how paid advertising and sponsorship are used in magazines and newsletters published by universities and colleges.

The results of this survey will be used for a study I’m conducting on this topic and a future article.

This online survey should take you 3 to 4 minutes. The data you provide will only be used for its statistical interest.

If you include your name and email address at the end of the survey (although this isn’t mandatory), you’ll receive an executive summary of the results highlighting some best practices, a way for me to thank you for your participation.

So, please take 3 minutes now to do this survey! I would really appreciate your help.