MARKETING HIGHER EDUCATION: MYTHS AND PROBLEMS

Abstract

The budgetary decentralization of higher education in the United Kingdom calls for individual institutions and units within them to take increasing responsibility for raising their own funds. The author, who argues that higher education institutions must derive an increasing proportion of their budgets from the marketing of their products goes on to explain how this can be done. To begin with, the nature of marketing and of market research must be well understood, and the legitimacy of the marketing process itself must be accepted by all the members of the university community. It is then necessary to do a marketing audit so as to establish what a given institution has to sell and what its outside environment wishes to buy. Flexibility on the part of the seller with regard to type, level, duration, and scheduling of courses is very important. It is also necessary to be able to persuade the potential buyer that he wants to have what the seller has to offer. At this point, however, the author cautions the reader as to the dangers of some seven market myths as applied to higher education and the dangers of oversell. He concludes that with prudence higher education can be marketed to the satisfaction of all concerned with results which avoid the “unhappy paradox” that the marketing of higher education is both essential and disastrous.