Picking up Harvards crumbs

The article in today’s New York Times “Leaner Times at Harvard: No Cookies” is like a dispatch from a foreign planet. I’m from the west, and I learned long ago that means my ideas about higher education are very different than those in the east. Additionally, I have spent most of my career nearer the other end of the education spectrum where first generation college students studied to find jobs to take families from poverty to prosperity, not from prosperity to prosperity.

I don’t begrudge Harvard students their hot breakfast. At a recent staff meeting on our campus the attendance was at all time high, and people were visibly excited (me included) because we had been promised breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day.

However, once again what happens at Harvard overshadows the entire higher education landscape. It seems like the Ivy’s always do, and media equate the Ivy’s with higher education in general. By sheer numbers of students this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Most of the teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and entrepreneurs that will shape this century are toiling away at state schools, community colleges, and dare I say it – some are even in for profit online programs.

This focus on the Ivy’s is a pretty significant problem for those of us in marketing and public relations. The big stories are usually about these schools. We have to spend time talking to people who think our faculty are paid too much, our football teams get special treatment, and our students are pampered because news by its very nature is always reporting at the edges, nowhere near the reality of most campuses.

It seems to further my theory that the future for us may be in more and more direct efforts with our stakeholders. It also means that most of us should never, ever, use the “Harvard on the X” analogy when talking about who we want to be. They don’t even get cookies at faculty meetings.

P.S. Posted at 2 p.m.: Since I took the NY Times to task for their focus on Harvard I should also link this very interesting essay by Paul Krugman that in a way makes the point that we are somehow missing the forest through the trees when it comes to higher education in America.