The Internets iz a scary place!

Lots of hubbub this morning about a well respected blog for higher education marketing being taken down, due to to disagreements between the blogger and the blogger's higher-ups.

Basically the back story is this: The blog is a personal blog, tastefully and humorously written, that fictionalizes the blogger's roadblocks at work. Identities of the people, places and events being referred to are not disclosed or heavily fictionalized in the form of cartoons, and the blog brought some insight into the blogger's life and the background of the work he was doing for his school. But, the school decided that he was too openly criticizing their processes and as soon as they found out about the blog he was "given a talking to" about the blog, and the writer decided to shut it down. Basically they were afraid his critiques, though cleverly disguised, were not disguised enough and it would hinder their web redesign process even more if others saw it and were afraid of how they would be represented on it. (Granted in a humorous, cartoony way.)

This got me thinking, as it did many others.

The Internet is empowering to everyone- anyone can go on it and instantly have a voice via a blog or twitter or commenting on articles that is public and out there for the world to see. And that scares the bejeebus out of some institutions and whatnot (the college I worked for previously was one of these places, and closely monitored anything students said about it and would not allow any kind of public commenting forum because of what students might say on it), because they can't 100% monitor what is being publicly said about them.

And you know what? I think that's great.

That isn't to say I approve of the people who go on various articles and say terrible things about anyone that disagrees with them. But if someone has a terrible experience somewhere this not only gives the ability to share that with others who could potentially go there, but also a heads up to that institution/company/ etc. that someone had a terrible time and there is a situation to be remedied. Maybe it's too late to fix that one experience, but it's a chance to find an underlying problem and fix it. Plus if you can find something like this and then apologize and rectify everything how good does your company look then???

Sure we only want to see great things about whatever it is that we're involved with, but I think with the prevalence of the Internet authenticity is now valued more than constant pitches. A good review on a blog of a product or place is worth more than a thousand advertisements saying how good the product is. Why? We are all savvy now to being pitched to. No one wants to be sold anything, they want to find it organically, from a source they trust.

That being said, I think more people are more likely to trust a blog's opinion or a Tweet than an advertisement because it's an authentic reaction to whatever it is the blog or Tweet is about.

Sadly, many places still try to monitor everything that is being said about them, directly or indirectly, as in the case of this blog. But that just isn't possible anymore, and hey, if you can't beat them- join them! And let's face it, you can't make everyone happy all the time.

Again, I don't think there is a place for what I call "internet litter" (the hateful remarks spewed on some comment forms at other posters or the article itself) but conversation can be critical and be OK... as a college or company isn't it better to know someone is unhappy so you can do something about it rather than pretend it never happened?

Times is a changin'... some of the old ways of marketing and PR just don't work anymore with the "web 2.0" stuff.

I have to share the initial blog's response to the outcry on the web from blogs such as this one. What a beauty of a response- well done!

And on that note- have a fantastic weekend everyone!

Cool Things About Involving High School Students

I have had a revelation with some of the community activities that I've been doing in the past few months that I don't know if it's really been figured out yet by a lot of the organizers in the community I'm in.

High Schoolers are the BEST people to get involved in your activity. Why?
Here's a quick run down:

1. They're passionate about it. There's not the cynicism I find with other adults about whatever the event is, these kids throw themselves into it 100% and completely believe it will be successful.

2. Because they are excited, they bring their friends, who in turn get excited. And so on...

3. They are masters of social networking. Do you want to advertise your event? Get a 16 year old who is on Facebook/Myspace/Twitter excited about it and s/he will update the status thing every 5 minutes with something new and exciting about your event/activity. Pretty soon everyone knows about it.

4. Text messaging. See #3, only with text messages.

5. When the teen is begging to go to this event, then they tell their parents... and thus the adults in the community find out about it.


It's an easy way to get word out about your activity in the community you're in. Social networking has made the world a much smaller pace where news can travel in an instant... and these kids are on top of it. The trick is involving a few of them in the production side of it- not only does it give them some responsibility but they're REALLY proud of it when it's over. So, moral of the story: to do grass roots marketing involve your local teenagers!

Words!

This is a fantastic video from someone who writes the dictionary. Quite frankly, I never thought writing the dictionary would be a cool job, but shows what I didn't know!

Check it out. It's kind of long so give it a bit to load, then watch, and watch the whole thing. There is a great bit about 10 minutes in. http://gelconference.com/videos/2006/erin_mckean/

New Scholarship!

New scholarship available at www.mycollegescholarship.com

Check it out and have a great long weekend!

Moving Up Commencement...

Remember a few blogs ago when I mentioned that the photographs on a virtual tour are deceiving?

Well, humorist Peter Smith also saw the irony of that in his latest piece asking colleges in Minnesota not to move up commencement to early May because May is one of the few times up here that campuses actually look like their photos!

I highly recommend listening to it, it's quite funny.

Here is the link: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/19/smith/

Email and Etiquette

First off, I like email.
I know email isn't as cool with the younger crowd anymore, they'd rather have a Facebook message, and that's fine too but I still really like my email.

You can contact several people at once, you can spell check it, and you can attach whatever you need to! But I have found that I've run into a question of etiquette that I'm not sure of anymore. If you get an announcement email, or a request email, do you need to respond or acknowledge it? I recently sent out several announcements about a Shakespeare theatre production I'm involved with to invite some local high school teachers and their students to auditions, and no one acknowledged receiving the email. Now, there was nothing in the email asking them to respond, but I just would have thought at least one of them would have said "Cool! Thanks!" (Unless the whole thing was really lame... also possible!) When I contact colleges with general updates and information usually at least half of them will respond with a simple "Thank you"... so I know they received it. So is that something you should do? Or not? Or does it depend on the email?

So then, if you're contacted by a school via email do you need to respond? I guess I would always encourage it... since usually it's not spam- and if you're not interested in the school you can use the response as an opportunity to tell them you're not interested. Otherwise if you're undecided use your response to ask more questions and learn more, and more importantly, get a feeling about the personnel at the college. Does it take them 3 minutes or 3 days to respond to your email?

As for me, I generally like a basic response to emails I send out- even if it's just a 'yes' or a 'thank you'... and that's it! But I don't know if that's to be expected or not from a majority?

Can anyone enlighten me a little bit please??

Congrats to our $1,000 drawing winner!

We are pleased to announce that Paulding County High School in Georgia is our newest High School Member drawing winner!

Their high school will receive $1,000 to use however the school feels is best. (Hopefully they will let us know so we can share it on here.)

Congratulations!

If you need more information about entering the drawing, please check here:
High School Member Page

I don't 100% understand.

I just read an article this morning on Forbes about parents getting into the "risky business" of co-signing for a student loan with their child. Here it is: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/14/student-loans-retirement-moneybuilder-personal-finance-loans.html

But here's what I don't understand. Why are they encouraging parents and students to tap a 401k retirement fund or take out a second mortgage on the home when if the parent is willing to co-sign, there are plenty of much safer alternatives that are set up for education to take?

For instance, first the student has the option of Stafford Loans. These have many, many years to repay and are primarily in the student's name. (And while I understand many parent's don't want their child to leave college with debt, I think a little isn't a bad idea because it helped me get my credit established which eventually let me buy my first home and a nice car... and it also helped me take school a little more seriously when I realized it was coming out of my own pocket!) They also have low, low interest rates as well as some have subsidized interest while you're in school so you don't accrue any interest during that time.

Then there is, at least in Minnesota, the PLUS loan which requires a co-signer and again is similar to the Stafford loan. Then there are Perkin's loans and a whole bunch of other loans that are set up for education- specifically in that there are no payments while the child is in school, interest is low and there isn't a risk of the parent losing a home or a retirement fund.

Articles like that, in my opinion, cause the unnecessary panic about attending college due to the financial situation that is completely unwarranted. I think they also prevent some students from going to college because the parents put it in the child's head (and I have seen this happen) that it's completely impossible because it's too expensive.

Dear Publication Companies: before you cause an uproar in the educational community by showing how risky financially it is for a child to attend college PLEASE show the whole story and not make it appear that the parent has to remortgage their home (an example used in the article) to send their child to school.

Thank you,
Nikki

Now, that being said: do some students not understand that their loans are loans that have to be repaid? Yes. But there is REQUIRED financial aid entrance counseling when a student starts school and REQUIRED financial aid counseling when a student leaves school. If a parent co-signs on the loan should the student have a clear understanding that the student is the primary beneficiary of the loan and therefore responsible for repayment? Yes! However, these issues which seemed insurmountable in the article are ones that a little communication between the parent and student will clear up..

As far as the student not getting a job right out of college? Again, as long as the student doesn't have the unrealistic expectation (or the parent!) of the student walking off the graduation stage into the $500,000 a year job (not saying that doesn't happen, but let's face it, it's not common) and will have an entry level salary for a while and may have to (gasp) make some sacrifices to start some of the repayment on student loans repayment is not impossible.

I have a fair amount of student loans myself from my undergraduate and graduate studies. (And by "fair amount" I mean significantly more than I see people freaking out about in these articles.) And you know what? Once repayment starts my payments for all of them are less than $300 a month. I have made payments on them in the past between colleges, and you know what? I was able to make the payments on my student loans, my car payment on a new car, my rent payment and still have money left over for food on about $12.00 an hour.

So please, please please please when you read articles like this please don't fall prey to the panic that I think they induce. Talk to your financial aid counselors before you say college is impossible. I'll get off of my soap box now. Please go to college.

Oh, and have a great weekend!

Announcing Announcements... How Do You Do It?

Again another topic I find fascinating.

There is an article on Inside Higher Ed today about people learning family announcements that are fairly important via Facebook/Twitter and other social networking sites rather than in person with a phone call, etc.

There is much grumbling from an older generation about this (read the comments on the article) ... how it's tearing the social fabric of our society, etc, etc, etc... but while it might be tearing an older version of our society I do think it's rebuilding a new one. The technology that is available now is changing so quickly, and for many of the younger generation (today's college and high school students) these things have always been around. It is now second nature to immediately post your news as your Facebook status for this group.

I'm torn. Sure I like a phone call to let me know- for instance, my best friend just called to tell me she's thinking of moving to Rhode Island this summer and wanted to let me know before she put it on Faceboook. It was a gesture I appreciated, though had I learned it via Facebook or Twitter I wouldn't have been upset. From what I see in the high school students I work with have college students I used to work with, learning news via these messages is perfectly acceptable. Now, I know there are some older folks out there who don't use these sites and don't think this is the way to learn news. At one time it wasn't, and for you (depending on who you are) it may not be. But for these kids, I really think it is and these "impersonal" (as I heard them called) methods of communication are not impersonal at all to this generation.

Broadcasting to all 300+ of your Facebook/Myspace/Twitter friends that you just had a major life changing event happen immediately after it happens I think is the way this group reaches out to their support network. It's not second nature for this group to pick up the phone, or go to someone's house. They log in instead.

Is it bad? No, I don't think so. It's just different, and different than what maybe some people are accustomed to. Change isn't all bad- my guess is that with a little digging I could find some of the same opinions that came out when the telephone became more commonplace. (What do you MEAN people can just call each other with news and not do it face to face??!)

Just think, in 40 years when we're 500 new versions of these sites down the road this generation will be grumbeling about how impersonal it is that all 300 of your Thoughtbook friends can hear your thoughts as soon as you think them. :) Yep, these things go in cycles. I bet, if you're thinking about how much you disagree with this post you can think of something you did as a teenager that was commonplace to you that your parents would have been shocked at!

Data Use and Privacy Policies

Don't tell me THAT doesn't sound like an exciting title for a blog!

While it might not be the most exciting, I do think it's a fairly important topic to address, especially with all of the college search sites and scholarships available on the web. Most sites like this will, at some point, ask you to give at the very minimum your name and email address, sometimes a zip code. This can also include address, academic interests, phone numbers, test scores... etc.

Most of these sites, both scholarship and search, have affiliated colleges who will have access to this information. And these colleges, who are actively recruiting, will probably contact you at some point, whether or not you have specifically expressed interest in them. This may be via email (most common) but a few may send you something in the mail or even call you.

If you are undecided on a school I would recommend taking a look at what they send you. Sometimes an option presented out of the blue can be a good one! If you are fairly sure of where to go but haven't committed yet I would still recommend looking at the information if only as a test of how sure you are of your college choice. If you're wavering at all figure out why and what qualities you are looking for in a college that the initial choice doesn't have. There are enough colleges in the US that I can pretty much promise you that there is an ideal school for you out there- it just might not be close to home.

But, if you are decided and committed and all of those fun things, then politely let the schools contacting you know that you are already committed somewhere else. Believe me, they'll be OK with it, wish you luck at that school, and should take you off of their lists. Otherwise, if you receive an email that you never respond to most schools will (correctly) take that as a "no". (This, in school lingo, is called a double opt-in. It's why sometimes they'll confirm it via by asking you to reply when you do request information.)

However, if you're concerned about this ALWAYS check the privacy and data use policies when you submit your information. If you're not sure then contact the company and they should tell you.

I do receive quite a few emails asking me why schools are contacting them, but our data use policy states that when you submit a scholarship application your information (nothing sensitive, just mainly contact info and academic interests) is made available to our members schools. The hard part is that once we send out the information to the school it is up to that school as to what they will do with it, and while I can pull you off of the Anycollege email list I cannot remove you from XYZ College's email list.

As far as I can tell right now, that is how most sites function that are similar... so if you sign up for anything on a website that has anything to do with colleges, be prepared to hear from colleges!

Please let me know what questions you have on this topic... it seems to be a pressing one now that quite a few of the Class of '09 has selected their schools but are still on the mailing lists of many colleges and universities.