Hierarchy of Student Decision-Makine Step 4 Can I Get a Job?

This is the fifth installment on the Hierarchy of Student Decision Making. Introduction to the Hierarchy How they Choose click here
The First Step in the Hierarchy- Can I Get In? click here. Installment 3 - Can I Afford it? click here
Installment 4 - Can I Graduate? click here

The Hierarchy of Student Decision-Making Step 4

Can I Get a Job?
Now we come to one of the more divisive and hypocritical issues on a campus. It goes to the heart of the mission of an institution and why society supports higher education. It is an issue that many in higher education fault our students for holding. This is also one of the highest order concerns of all students and is a major deciding factor to attend or stay at a college or university. If students can answer it positively, they will attend and stay. If not, they will go elsewhere. Simply put “Can I Get Job”.

Or to rephrase it as I have heard it from students “If I pay the money to go to this place, do the work, jump through the hoops it requires for me to graduate, will I get a job. A good job?”

The Job-Orientation of Students

The figures show that what motivated us to attend a college is still what motivates today’s students to choose a school. And even more so. The annual study called The American Freshman National Norms by the Staff of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA has been following the attitudes, motivators and beliefs of incoming freshmen for over 40 years. In the latest available report, 2006 freshmen indicated the

Top reasons noted as very important in deciding to go to college

All Men Women

To learn more about things that interest me 76.8% 72.1% 80.6%
To be able to get a better job 70.4% 70.4% 70.4%
To get training for a specific career 69.2% 64.8% 72.7%
To be able to make more money 69.0% 71.9% 66.6%
To gain a general education and appreciation of ideas 64.3% 57.5% 69.9%
To prepare myself for graduate or professional school 57.7% 51.0% 63.1%.

(http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/PDFs/06CIRPFS_Norms_Narrative.pdf)

Three out of the top five motivators to go to college focus specifically on a job resulting from going to college. The first motivator is also focused on jobs for students since they will major in areas of “things that interest me” and that major is most often the area in which they wish to work after college.

Again the 2006 CIRP shows the importance of a job from attending a school.

Table 2. Reasons for Attending this College by College Choice (percentages)

“Very Important” Reason for Attending this College

1st 2nd 3rd 4th Choice Choice Choice and lower

This college has a very good academic reputation 63.0* 49.9* 41.1* 30.5*
This college’s graduates get good job 52.7* 44.9* 3 39.2* 31.3*.

Source (http://www.epi.elps.vt.edu/Perspectives/06CIRPFSNorms.pdf)

Reputation is an extremely important aspect that leads to the initial choices and getting a job is a close second most important reason. In fact, the second most important stated reason for choosing a school is that graduates get good jobs. There is indeed a relationship that students believe between getting into a name rand school (reputation) and getting a good job because one graduates from the name brand institution. It is thus hard to separate out the first and second primary motivators since in the students’ eyes, there are two parts of the same motivator – getting a good job.

Once the student is in a college, when deciding to stay or leave “this college’s graduates get good jobs” rises right to the top after preceding concerns – affording, graduating – are answered. If a student is attending a school with a reputation for getting graduates good jobs, the student will do all he or she can to stay there. Even if they are not able to respond to the final step in the hierarchy of decision-making “Will I enjoy it?” with a positive answer. If the student is even hating the school but believes graduating from it will lead to the good job or grad school, he or she will most normally tough it out. As a student I interviewed at a name brand school told me “I hate this place. I wish I had gone somewhere else but if I can just make it through another f---ing year, the name on the diploma will open doors. I can handle another year to get the job and money I want.”

I got in. I can pay for it. I can see my way to graduation. Now, will it get me to where I want to go? Will I get a job, a good job after I graduate. If the answer is yes, students will be strongly motivated to stay as long as their corresponding motivation to get that job remains strong. We in higher education need to realize that. Students attend our colleges, our universities and our classes to do what they must to get a job. We need to accept that reality at some level at least so we do not discourage students from staying at the institution or rejecting what we do. We should not denigrate students for doing what we did so we could get the position we sought in higher education. This was out professional goal. As it is theirs but maybe not to go into education.

So it is important that colleges help keep students focused on college as a pathway to the job they want. More on the how to later.

Is College the AAA League Preparing Students for Jobs?

We in academia know that attending college is a crass, unintelligent motive for going to school. To get a job! That’s not what we are here for! Not why I went to school. The corporatization of colleges and universities is demeaning the role and value of education. If we were to agree to that as acceptable we would be lowering the value of higher education to become just a minor league for business, corporations and the economy.

Higher education has been corrupted enough by the business-like attitudes of administrators and trustees. Trustees we can understand somewhat. They are form outside. Business people and corporate big shots who buy their way onto the boards. And the presidents just suck up to them and what they want done. The models presidents and chancellors use and the way they make decisions are straight from the latest business best seller. The fad of the day. We’ve had them all. Trying to run the institution like it is a business and money and budgets are the most important thing around here. The salaries senior administrators pull down. No wonder they think of themselves as CEO’s and not college presidents. They are the ones who make this place feel so corporate as they suck up to corporations and business for donations. Administrators care more about bringing in money than the faculty or students. They seem to put their own interests before students and teaching.

And maybe a few science professors who spend their time looking for breakthroughs they can patent and make a fortune on. But…Oh yes, and athletics. Nothing but a big business with coaches making huge salaries and sponsorship deals. Maybe some TV and radio too. And well, the athletes are just interested in getting into the pros and making fortunes. But they do bring us school pride when they win. But the rest of us, NO! Well okay, maybe some chem and bio folks who do research paid for by big pharmaceuticals to find what they need to sell some pills and stuff. And yes, I guess some tech folks who write programs, widgets, invent stuff and processes and run their own companies when not in the classroom. The law and med profs need to stay abreast of the real field so I suppose when they have their own practices and work as expert consultants, they are expanding their expertise and should be paid for it. The psychology, sociology and anthro people who do that too. Not for the money or reputation of course. The business folks too. They use their real world consulting and businesses to strengthen their students’ understanding of the real world of business.

But let’s realize they do not take time away from students either since their classes are covered by T.A’s of adjuncts. Granted the T.A’s and adjuncts may not be as good as the experts but at least we are able to get them some work teaching courses for the name and faculty whose names and pictures in the brochures attracted students to the school. So they play an important role that way too. By bringing students to the school where they will be taught by others…. They are sort of the marketing bait to hook the students. They still get good education from the T.A’s and adjuncts that are switched in there. Granted, if the administration would just spend more money on more full-time faculty and salaries, this would not happen. But they have this business model that just hurts the institution.

Those who teach in other areas like engineering, business, criminal justice, technology and what we call the applied studies, do have another point of view. Here is where some of the CS Lewis divide comes in higher education. Sure they teach theories and ideas but they believe the students should be able to do something with the learning. That should not be what college is for. To focus on preparing students for careers and jobs is anti-intellectual. Simply because students are in college to get jobs and because society has supported education since it helps the economy, society and culture demeans the role of higher education to open students to new ideas and improve their ability to think, to reflect, enrich the culture and humankind. That’s why students should come to college. Not for a job.

As an ex-English teacher I know that I was not teaching people so they could get jobs when I assigned works such as Shakespeare, Faulkner, Dickinson, Plato. My colleagues in many humanities areas such as philosophy, art, creative writing, theology and so on never taught to get students ready to get jobs after graduation. We were not concerned with business want ads such as philosopher wanted – entry level position in growing firm needs philosopher; metaphysical background preferred. That was not our job. Our job was to teach students all branches of philosophical endeavor and help them to get ready for graduate school. Maybe one of them would make it to the PhD and become a philosophy teacher. Which is..I guess..a job.

So if they did become a university professor, I guess reading Plato was preparation for a job. But that would never be why I or my colleagues would have taught it. Not as job prep but as part of our own jobs…To work against job-oriented learning. That’s a reason I went on to get a PhD after all. So I could work against the idea of college as career-prep. Except when I taught Technical Writing I guess.

But to do what the technologists suggest is more training than learning. And training as we know is much more limited. This is stimulus A. When you see it, you are to do B. A yields B. Training. But is training the realm of higher education. Oh sure, maybe in community colleges and career schools but not universities. Community colleges and career colleges are there to train people to get a job. But in universities, there is a higher, non-career related mission. Training is for lower-level functions. For those who just want to get a job from their degrees. People like… well, doctors. Yes, they should be trained. That’s good training. Stimulus A blood flowing from a wound should lead immediately to B to stop bleeding out. But then, people go to med school to become…..Well, to become a doctor which is a career, not a job. Like I went to grad school and studied English to become a composition teacher in which I trained students to write which they did not want to do until they realized it applied directly to their future jobs. Once I could link it to their future work they had an interest. They finally became involve because writing could have an effect on their obtaining a good job.

We Were Our Students

Whether we want to admit it or not, accept it or not, we too went to college and university to get a job. Teaching is a job. We all went to college to become something. From early on in life we have been responding to the question of “what will you be when you grow up?” College is part of the answer. It helps us grow up as we go there to major in an area. That area is most always the one that we wish to work in as well even if it is to work in a university as a professor. Even art majors go to college to become better artists and maybe even sell their work. To make money and live. Just like our students. It never hurts to do something one enjoys for a job since we spend more time on the job that out of it quite often. That is why the CIRP found students saying they also came to school to study something that interests them as well as to get a good job. They want to do something they will enjoy while they study it so they can graduate and make money. Actually isn’t that what we do everyday we teach? Do something we enjoy and try to pass that pleasure on to our students? Isn’t what we do? Trying to combine love of our subject and our work? And even if we teach or administer something that does not thrill us at this moment, don’t we do that job so we can do other things we enjoy more? Just like many of our students know they may have to do to get started in a career?

Of course there are some of us who will say that we only teach so we can have the time and money to do what we really want to do. And there are some teachers who try to become administrators to get out of teaching because they have a rather insane notion that administration is easier than teaching. And others will work very hard to get grants or release time to get out of teaching some sections. But that is work too that depended initially on getting a degree to be able to get a job in a college or university. But even if one teaches just to be able to study and read about what interests, teaching is still a job; a way to make an income and live, eat, and study or do something more pleasurable. By the way, students will say that they unfortunately know that some professors do not like teaching from the way such people teach.

They do not like teachers who are not engaged in their learning because they know that what they skills and knowledge they acquire are for their goals of graduating and getting a job.

So it is important that colleges help keep students focused on college as a pathway to the job they want. More on the how to later.

Reverse Alchemy Turning Gold into Leaden Enrollment Numbers

Some colleges have discovered the secret to reverse alchemy. These colleges take the golden success of recruiters, marketers, advertisers and enrollment managers and turn it into leaden failure. They turn the gold into lead with some of the worst customer service found anywhere. They are able to take enthusiastic, motivated students whose only goal is to enroll and attend the college and transform them into people who cannot wait to get away from the college.

In fact, twelve percent of enrollments are lost once a student steps onto your campus to enroll and or attend classes. That’s right. Students who have come to your college or university with every intention of being a matriculated student, a precious FTE, are turned away by experiences on your campus as they try to complete the enrollment process. Before they complete the process you lose 12% of your potential enrollment by what is done to them as they are trying to enroll.

And once they do manage to enroll, the college continues its reverse alchemy by tarnishing students with customer service that will forever stain the student’s feelings about the college. What’s worse, these students share their blemished experiences with at least six others just to make sure that the recruiting job remains stressful and demanding.

Colleges are able to work their alchemy from the moment students step onto the campus right through to their stomping out the door mumbling their own incantations, never to return.

An example from Embrace the Oxymoron: Customer Service in Higher Education.(LRP Publications 2002); the first and only book to address the issue of customer service in colleges. This actually occurred just as it appears here.

“A young woman had arrived on campus with her parents. She was all set to enroll at the college. This was obviously a moment of family solidarity and pride at the daughter going to college. She had made up her mind. She would attend this school. The young woman and her parents found their way to the admission’s office. They obtained an application form after waiting in line for over nine minutes. They sat down and the young woman completed the form. She walked up to the “Welcome Desk” and handed it to an unsmiling clerk who sat behind the counter. Then she returned to sit with her parents and wait to see a counselor to choose courses. As a new student, she was required to get an admission’s counselor’s signature before she could register for courses.

After sitting for five minutes, the parents said they would take a walk around the campus while she waited. They returned 35 minutes later, walked up to their daughter. "All set Hon? Let's go."

She informed her parents that she had not seen a counselor yet and was still waiting. The father was appalled and marched right up to the admissions desk. "My daughter has been waiting here for over half-an-hour to see somebody. What’s the deal? Why hasn't she been waited on yet?"

The woman seated behind the desk coldly stared at him, purposefully waiting about 20 seconds (a period of time that would seem like another half hour to an irate customer) before she spoke. Then she said, "There are other people here too. Your daughter is not the only one trying to see a counselor who’s busy doing things. They have other things they have to do besides seeing students. Your daughter's turn will be as soon as her turn comes. There are a few people before her."

"Not anymore," the father said as he motioned to his wife and daughter. "Let's go. You don’t want to go here. For what they charge, they should be jumping to help you."

With that, they left the college.

She did not enroll there.

She went somewhere else.

15 Principles

There are appropriate “incantations” against reverse alchemy. These are the 15 Principles of Good Customer Service. If you’d like to get a free copy, just let me know. NealR@GreatServiceMatters.com.

In this case, the following the principles were violated.

1. EVERY STUDENT WANTS TO ATTEND

CHEERS UNIVERSITY AND EVERY

EMPLOYEE WANTS TO WORK THERE!

“where everybody knows your name

and they’re awfully glad you came”

2. All members of the community must be given courteous,

concerned and prompt attention to their needs and value.

3. Students come before personal or college-focused goals.

Students really are more important than you or I are.

Following the 15 principles can lead to enrollment alchemy that is golden. If the college, or in this case, the admissions desk people, had followed principles, the young woman would have enrolled. She and her parents would have been happy supporters of the college rather than angry ex-customers.

Review the principles with your college. Have workshops to discuss and implement them and you’ll see leaden frowns turn to the brilliance of golden happiness and enrollment/retention success.

Campus of Dreams Marketing to the ME Generation

So how do you market to the Me Generation? Maybe you don’t. At least not in the old traditional academic way. You know, the Field of Dreams view book approach in which you shape a reality you want the potential students to see. (Even if you have to fake aspects like pictures of students who don’t go to a school.) The goal of this approach is to manipulate the reality and the image to manipulate the target audience. So the Campus of Dreams.

I am sure you can picture it now. A group of four or five students (one white, one black, an Asian, an Hispanic and maybe a male of an alternate lifestyle) walking together (all healthy, well dressed like a TV show teen) across a sunlit but slightly shadowed green campus with some wonderful building slightly out of focus in the rear of the scene. Then in other pictures – reading a book while leaning against a tree, sitting in class while a better looking faculty member or a model hired to look like a teacher smiles while writing on the board and so on and on.

You know, the campus of dreams where marketing ideas from the past are supposed to attract students to that new dorm you just built out in what was a parking lot. The Build it and they will come. Not the building but the image. We think the cliché worked in the past. Maybe then. Not at all now.

This was a marketing concept built on control of image and the buyer. It was marketing 101. If we marketers control the message and the image, we can control and manipulate the mind and emotions of the market. That will get us the results we want. We will make the school look like the college we wanted to go to. That’ll do it. And for a while it did just that.

An example. When I designed a community college marketing campaign in 1998 for a school that had eleven years of enrollment decline with “traditional college marketing” we came up with a campaign called “Harvard on the Hill” (a traditional slight against community colleges) we decided to position ourselves against well know schools in the first two years as a transfer option. Most community colleges can compare themselves very favorably in those years against name brand schools in class size, student teacher ratios, cost…followed by transfer to a four-year school. So we developed billboards that had text such as “A Harvard education. Just $62,540 off.” Start here. Go there” Or “First two years of Georgetown. Just less Hoya Paloya. Start here. Go there.” And so on. We backed it all up with detailed advertorials that flushed out the numbers and details.

I received letters from other schools complaining that this was no way to market a school. It was “anti-collegiate.” “Not academic.” “Too (choking sound) commercial.” They were bothered by the humor we used and by comparing ourselves to othet schools. These all came from colleges and universities which were then having no enrollment issues. Now..? A couple school trustees even questioned the marketing as perhaps not appropriate to an educational institution. “They seem out of control” one said.

Ahhhhh. Perhaps that was the secret.

Now the real test of marketing. Marketing is to finally sell product, services, and purchases. That’s what even image marketing or branding is supposed to do. So, if the campaign worked and enrollment went up, it worked. It worked. Then when there was a change in leadership, they went back to the old academic marketing and enrollment dropped again.

Lesson. The old ways are not the best ways. They do not work. We just put so much money and tradition into them that we must believe they will work. They don’t. they are control-based.

Perhaps what needs to be done is realize that to a very large extent what we call marketing doesn’t work. And maybe didn’t really work well in the past. Though it may have pleased the internal campus and even won an award from peers, did it really sell enrollments? Not really sure. But I am sure now that what is thought of as traditional collegiate marketing will not sell to the ME generation market.

As Scott Donaton, Editor of Advertising Age was quoted in the December 2006 WIRED (p 231) The era of control is over: “You can either stay in the bunker, or you can try to participate. And to not participate is criminal.”

It is criminal because schools are spending huge, ever increasing amounts of money to market for enrollments. But they are doing it with traditional collegiate control the image and message approaches that will not work with the ME generation. This is a generation that does not respond to a message unless they can at least participate in forming it.

So now, what will work?

U Loses Millions of Dollars - Economics of Customer Service

Colleges and universities lose millions of dollars a year from poor customer service that pushes students to drop out of their schools. Students who feel schools do not care about them, treat students poorly, are perceived as not worth their time or money, or are not perceived as providing for their fiscal and future career needs, leave colleges and take their money elsewhere. The schools lose millions of dollars. And the number of students who drop out, step out or transfer is rising as school revenues are sinking. A correlation for disaster that too many colleges are not doing enough or anything about.

As a result, most schools find themselves without enough money for instance, to hire more full-time faculty, purchase new equipment, fix up buildings, start new programs, even provide services for students that might keep them in school. They just figure high attrition into the budget as lost revenue.

In a 1/22/07 article in the Rocky Mountain News by Berny Morson,reprinted on UB Daily Metropolitan State College of Denver President Stephen Jordan says

“Connecting students with traditional professors during their freshman and sophomore years could reduce Metro's high drop-out rate, Jordan said. Metro loses 38 percent of its students during their freshman year.”

What Dr. Jordan is referring to here is one aspect of customer service which in college certainly does include the deliver of learning services to students. But teaching quality is only one factor for students quitting a school as discussed in an earlier posting Why Students Leave and What You Can Do About It

So let’s take a look at Metropolitan as an example of the sort of money that is involved with what I would propose is a need to focus more on customer service. Using some institutional research information from Metro’s website and working out some correlations and calculations using Dr. Jordan’s 38% attrition rate, Metropolitan lost at least $7.63 million, and likely more, from dissatisfied customers we call freshmen. It would be more when sophomore-senior drops are included.

Here is how we figured this out.

Using 2002 enrollment figures since the budget available was for 2002-3, it appears the school received a total of $72,735,132 in tuition, fees and state support. There were 11,246 full-time and 8,144 part time students with a state headcount of 16,663. We then calculated that each student was worth $4,365 in tuition and state revenues. Assuming the attrition rate of 38%, that meant that 2,428 freshmen dropped out. At a revenue value of 4365 that means Metro lost $10,598,220 in potential revenue for the next year and up to $5,299,110 in the second semester since most students drop after first semester. So total two year losses could have been $15,897,330 but for our purpose, we will just look at the $10.5 figure. (We didn’t calculate lost investment in admissions, marketing, processing and other freshman year school costs which often outpace per student revenue.)

Our studies of students who transferred to another school, stopped out or dropped out indicate that poor or weak customer service accounts for 72% of the reasons why students leave a college. That means that $7,630,184 can be attributed to customer service-related reasons for leaving Metro.

If Metro and other schools concentrated more on customer service, they could have cut that $7.6 million down. Maybe only by 50% at first but that would still be an additional $3.8 million. Even assuming a total full-time faculty annual cost at $100K with benefits and costs, that could mean Metro could potentially hire 38 more full-time faculty. Okay, so even if they just reduced customer service attrition by just 25%, that could be $1.9 million it did not have before. Any president want to leave $1.9 M on the table?

Customer service is a clear fiscal issue that can have major positive impact on a school. Your school could be more or less than what we figured at Metro. But it is clear that an investment in customer service pays significant fiscal dividends from a small investment.

Bathroom Solutions to Keep Staff and Students from Circling the Dropout Drain

One of the very first times I began to realize the importance of bathrooms was when I was a new dean at the University of Cincinnati’s Raymond Walters College. There had been some unrest among staff so I set up a Quality of Worklife Committee. The committee was to uncover issues that were lowering staff morale so we could work on them and raise morale.

When the committee first met, one problem came up immediately and forcefully. It seemed the hinges on the door to the women’s staff lounge (euphemisim for bathroom) were out of adjustment. So, the door never closed completely. There was about an inch or less opening between the door and the doorframe. Though no one would ever be exposed in that slit of an opening, it left the female staff who used the bathroom feeling vulnerable.

I had the door fixed that day and the effect on morale was immediate and very positive. When we then had the bathroom painted, put in a small couch, side table and table lamp put in from stuff we had in storage. The response was amazing. Morale shot up. Other staff issues seemed to fade away for a while anyhow. Just from a bathroom, I mean lounge upgrade.

Solution 1

Often the solution is simple and apparent. Take a look at and your bathrooms and see what can be done to make them function better. Actually go into each of them to check them out personally. See problems or aspects that might make you feel at all hesitant to use the facilities there, broken stall doors, dingy paint, dirty sinks or floors, doors without locks, no toilet paper, paper towels on the floor or an overflowing waste basket…. – get them fixed. The effort to upgrade such personal areas will be noted and make a strong statement about your dedication to customer service.

Solution 2

A few pieces of furniture in female bathrooms can turn them into “lounges” as well; places of quiet retreat where female staffers or students can sit, relax and share thoughts. Again like at better restaurants. Remember that women prefer to use the lounge together so make it comfortable to do so. You will be amazed what that would do for staff or student morale.

Across town in Cinci a few years later, another school, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College was making its students feel comfortable and at ease with its bathrooms. The dean of students had placed a small lamp stand in the entry way to the ladies’ bathroom. On top of the stand, she had placed a container of dried flowers. The students loved it.

Solution 3

Any school can buy some flowers to spruce up their bathrooms and make them look like lounges in better restaurants. This works best in a women’s bathroom. In either, men’s or womens’ rooms, pictures and or photographs on the walls help spruce up and class up a bathroom.

Uhhh, in the men’s room, leave some brochures or memos you have been wanting to get students to read. They will pick them up and read them while in the “library” (read stall) Men like to read while otherwise engaged.

At Briarcliffe College in New York, the bathrooms were identified by students as a major source of dissatisfaction and even friction. The graffiti on the faded, gray cinderblock walls and stalls was often racist and bigoted. Fortunately, the lights bouncing off the dirtied ceiling tiles were dim enough to make some of it more difficult to read. We had determined that the bathrooms were so disliked that they were a contributing factor in student dissatisfaction and drop outs.

We had the bathrooms painted a bright color. Too much to drink blue might not have been everyone’s favorite shade in the men’s room, but the facility director chose it for its bright stay awake quality as well as its ease of cleaning. I also think he got it on clearance to save a few bucks in the budget and it sure covered the walls well. A few gallons of anti-graffiti paint made the walls look new and clean. Replacing the light bulbs with higher wattage natural balanced fluorescent bulbs made the area brighter and more relaxing. A good scrubbing of the floor followed by a waxing added a sense of clean. Sinks and toilet seats were scrubbed. A daily check removed any new graffiti and touched up any scratched paint.

Solution 4

Bathrooms came off the complaint list. Retention actually went up. Of course, there were additional customer service changes put in place but we were able to recognize a positive response to the inexpensive (paint, cleaning, light bulbs) improvements.

Below are some pictures of the bathrooms at the Career College of Northern Nevada in Reno following an updating. The president/owner of the school had visited a local casino and seen how the bathrooms there were done. He decided that his students deserved bathrooms as beautiful as at a casino. He had the bathroom walls covered with foot square marble tiles like at what he had seen in better casinos and hotels.

The result? Students feel better about the school and themselves. They see their worth reflected in the shiny marble.

By the way, if there were an award for the cleanest and most consistently neatest bathrooms at a school, the award would go to Temple University. Granted I did not see every bathroom and none of the dorms but what I saw was reflective of the pride students and the staff seem to take in the campus. Temple has had a push on customer service going for a few years now and the results seem to be clearly paying off.

Enrollment, Metaphors and Poetry

A customer service facet that is often overlooked is the “objective correlative" aspects of a college. The phrase objective correlative is one taken from my English background and was discussed primarily with literature. But I find it has numerous applications to colleges. Besides, using the phrase helps justify all those years of study.

The phrase was popularized by the American poet TS Elliot to explain emotional reactions to literature. Objective correlative refers to a physical object or more likely a grouping or combination of objects, images, or visual descriptions that create(s) an emotional response to piece of literature. For example, if a poem has images of grey things, a tumbledown house and crows sitting on a broken fence, these physical objects could set a tone, an emotional metaphoric response, of gloom and foreboding. Try an Edgar Alan Poe poem for examples and pleasure.

In a college, the objective correlatives are physical aspects of the school - websites, the grounds, the buildings themselves, the colors we choose in the buildings, walkways, signs, offices, lobbies, etc. These all have a very powerful response on a potential student’s emotional reaction to the school and do affect his or her decision to enroll and/or stay. These all create a visual metaphor of the school and its potential to meet the three returns on investment all students bring with them. The three ROI’s – fiscal, emotional and affective – are what help determine if a student enrolls and will definitely be the determining factors in whether a student stays at a school, transfers or steps out.. (The three ROI’s are discussed in Customer Service Increases Retention)

We are aware that one of the most important parts of the enrollment process is the tour. But what most people don’t realize is that students have started creating a visual metaphor of the school as soon as they make contact with the objective correlatives of that school. The tour is generally simply that which polishes or corrupts the metaphor through what students see and hear while on the tour.

Metaphors are very powerful. They become emblematic of the institution and are very hard to shake loose or change. It is important to realize that students think not in words, but in pictures, in metaphors of their world as Gerald Altman discusses in How Customers Think. Students live in a visual environment which has them “read” and value objects emotionally. They trust their images much more powerfully than any words, which are the coin or our realm. They make amazingly quick and assertive metaphoric leaps of judgment and embed them deeply in their belief systems. We view the world intellectually in words and numbers that we want to make some logical sense. We wish to have rationality be the basis for decisions. They use visual objective correlatives and the metaphors they generate.

There is an inherent conflict that leads to problems. Examples of a couple of them in the next posting tomorrow.

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