Last July, I launched an online survey about the state of print and electronic publications in higher education to help me with two projects of mine:
- my column scheduled for the October issue of University Business
- a study I conducted for a big public university over the summer.
When I asked you to take part in the survey on July 9, my goal was to gain insights from about 50 people.
On July 25, the date I closed the survey, a total of 218 professionals working in institutions representing more than 3 million students completed it. This survey was done on a voluntary basis and thus doesn’t rely on a scientifically determined dataset. However, due to the significant number of respondents, it does provide good insights on current trends.
The survey was completed by people working in marketing/communications (62%), web (13%) and other offices. 40% of the respondents indicated working in private non-profit 4-year colleges, 39% in 4-year public colleges and 6% in public 2-year colleges. The average student population across the data was 15,405 students.
The main findings include:
- 77% of survey respondents states that their institutions are relying more on electronic publications (Web, blog, email, PDF, RSS, etc) to reduce the budget of print publications. Some indicated they were doing so to follow the preferences of their target audiences.
- Institutions with growing electronic budgets outnumber those with growing print budgets in the last 2 years— 44% responding note increasing electronic publications budgets while the same is true for only 36% of print.
- The majority of the publications produced by surveyed institutions are primarily available in both print and electronic formats.
- Exceptions to this bi-format rule include the campus calendar of events (59% electronic only) and campus news (46% electronic only) and the viewbook (46% print only).
- Application packages and course catalogs are the “bi-format champions†(75% and 72%, respectively).
- News-oriented publications as well as publications targeted to current students are the most transferable ones to electronic-only according to survey respondents. On the other side, publications targeted to donors and alums as well as admissions marketing pieces seem to be the least transferable.
I’ve already shared the 5-page executive summary including detailed findings and charts with the survey participants. It will also be available to HEE members starting tomorrow. Once my University Business column is out – in a few days, I’ll share the link with everybody else on this blog.