Blogs as Promotional Tool for Universities

Check out NY-based Pace University’s homepage.

A link to a few student blogs located here is placed on the center of the page. It’s simply a different take (or evolution, depending on your viewpoint) on the standard student profiles universities have been using in their promotional materials for years. Interesting nonetheless, though no doubt spurred by, then scrubbed by the PR office first. It may be artificial, but if you’re a prospective student unfamiliar with Pace and you’re surfing through 100’s of sites trying to narrow things down – the blogs may just keep your attention a bit longer, keep your clickstream suspended on the Pace site, and force you to take a second look at a school you may have previously glossed over.

Their PR person writes:

“Sure, the catalogs and program descriptions are great reading material and all, but does ‘Applied liberal learning is emphasized through an experience-based education encompassing practical application in the classroom, service learning, and internships,’ give you any idea of what your next four years here are going to be like?”

Good point. The mass of university websites are fairly identical and fail to help students differentiate one school from another. Take out the names and addresses from a university homepage and it would be pretty hard to pick out one school from another. This probably doesn’t do the trick, but it’s an interesting attempt to provide some character. Probably especially helpful for a commuter school that doesn’t have a strong identity.

In any event, it does make you think about how high school students are gathering information about their college choices – are they going to MySpace and searching on the profiles of students at campuses to get a better feel for the type of student a school attracts? High school students can already view public ratings of their teachers at sites like Rate My Teachers.What if you had a site called Rate My Institution? … the questions go on…