<p>I caught this story on Morning Edition Friday morning:</p>
<p>Since I am not in business or marketing, I found it interesting. The marketing gurus are encouraging colleges to start marketing to students as early freshman year or even earlier. I think I am glad I am done with that part.</p>
<p>Interesting link, Shennie.</p>
<p>I haven't had time to listen to the webcast yet, but I found the following statement in the abstract disturbing:</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's not unusual for kids with reasonably high test scores to receive several hundred pieces of mail and e-mail from colleges coveting their enrollment. Marketing costs can sometimes swell to thousands of dollars per student.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>(emphasis mine)</p>
<p>I'm disturbed by the waste this represents. </p>
<p>One way of thinking about this--"thousands of dollars per student" is in the same order-of-magnitude ballpark as the maximum Pell Grant.</p>
<p>There ought to be some way to "turn off the arms race" of indiscriminate unsolicited mailings.</p>
<p>Perhaps colleges receiving Federal money should be required to disclose publicly the amount of money they spend on marketing and promotion--including payments to ad agencies, printing, mailing, website design and maintenance, etc.</p>
<p>More generally, it would be nice if colleges were more transparent and publicly accountable about where they spend their money, particularly since so much of it is directly or indirectly public money. (I.e., directly because of Federal and state student aid and grants for research & education initiatives; indirectly because of subsidies implicit in the tax system--deductibility of contributions, exemption from tax on endowment income, property and sales tax, etc.)</p>
<p>wisteria, I hear you about the $ waste issue (aside from the environment/paper waste issue!). Perhaps there should be a way to do a DoNotCall or an OptOut. I'm sure many students are flattered to receive this mail, but usually 90% of it is unwanted or useless (inappropriate to the student's interests or abilities,& unsolicited).</p>
<p>My younger D and I have individually requested info from colleges of potential interest to her, via their websites. We find that much more efficient. We also click on "do not mail" options when receiving unsolicited e-mail from colleges of no interest to her. That has stopped it dead in its tracks.</p>
<p>D#1 was one of those with "high test scores" who received mail from hundreds of colleges. I can't think of a single mailing that affected her decision in the slightest. </p>
<p>D#2 had (still good but) considerably lower test scores, so I expected a lot less mail. Wrong. To date she has accumulated two hundred or so PLUS several hundred emails. It's a different set of schools that D#1 heard from, but that's little comfort since it appears that 100% of these messages will be ignored also.</p>
<p>So I second the notion that "marketing by mail" is a poor way to attract students, at least in its current state of development.</p>
<p>I was surprised to hear that the average marketing cost for private schools is $2200! State schools spend about $700 per student. (I assume that means they take their marketing costs and divide it by the number of students enrolled in the school, not the number of students they market to.) I certainly wouldn't mind having that money credited toward my son's tuition. </p>
<p>With 3 kids, we got a ton of mail. Only one piece impacted any of my kids. Son #2 got something in the mail that he found appealing enough to get him to visit the school. He applied and was accepted but didn't attend. I wish the schools would do more of the email thing rather than hard copies. At least the paper waste would be greatly decreased and I imagine it would be significantly cheaper.</p>