Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education
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Book Reviews Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education By David L. Kirp, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003; ISBN 0-67401-146-5; 336 pages; $29.95
The recent adoption of integrated marketing strategies by many major universities in America and abroad has focused attention on issues of ‘‘selling’’ higher education as if it were a product, of students as customers, and related aspects of commercialization. It was only a matter of time before a thoughtful critic would take on these matters, and David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, has proven well suited to the task. His book explores not only the marketing of higher education, but also the management of higher education institutions in a complex financial world with shrinking government funding, enticing entrepreneurial opportunities, and the challenges of attracting the best and brightest students. In fact, one section is called Management 101. This is by no means a how-to volume for professionals seeking to learn how to develop integrated marketing campaigns. Instead it is a thorough exploration of how both public and private universities, as well as for-profit institutions, have sought increasing levels of income and
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handled challenging money problems, in part through new structures and educational delivery mechanisms. At heart, however, the book is a professor’s look at these activities in the light of traditional academic values. In recent years, universities have been purchasing substantial amounts of television and magazine advertising to establish their brand identities and support record-setting capital campaigns. Higher education institutions have launched major initiatives in distance and online education, seeing opportunities in the marketplace for new students and new revenues. Communication officers find themselves confronted with the increasing need to answer news media questions about money, whether about rising tuition, decreasing government support, the intricacies of campaign giving, or the importance of alumni giving percentages in national rankings. Given those challenges, advancement professionals will find Kirp’s book a valuable and insightful tour of influential campuses and their activities in the marketplace. And tour is an apt description as Kirp has organized the
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT. VOL.5 NO.2 196–198 ª HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 2005. ISSN 1744-6511.
Book Reviews
book with chapters about 14 public, private, and for-profit higher education institutions and their recent experiences in the competitive marketplace. This approach allows him to explore issues in depth, both from a theoretical standpoint and with detailed narratives of real world experiences. Anyone who has been in educational advancement for a decade or more will find that the book illuminates matters that they have encountered in their own institutions or in reading periodicals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education. Those interested in marketing as
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