Promoting big purchases (like private education) in a gift-card culture

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/gift-cards

Interesting article about how to promote buying, particularly of high dollar items and particularly in a down economy. “Myopia” refers to our short-sighted behavior of satisfying our immediate needs (eating chocolate) in preference to our long term good (losing weight). The “second mover” (our future self who hits the snooze button) almost always wins out over our current “first mover” intentions (to wake up early). Such things we’ve studied a lot.

But it turns out we often do the opposite, delay future pleasure in favor of current discipline, especially in down economic times. This pattern, economists, game theorists, etc., call “hyperopia.” To take a common example, tourists visit all of the local attractions that we as permanent residents never do. Why? Because we think we’ll always have time to do that later, so we do the chores today instead. In our JBU context, people delay going to that expensive college option today (JBU) because they say it’s better to save money now by going to a community college because the benefit of the more expensive purchase seems so far in the future that people assume they will have time to make up for what they missed out now.

So how do these theorists propose that we get people to buy now and buy expensive? Our gift card culture provides one possible answer. Turns out that when given the choice of a gift card that expires in two months versus one that expires in the 3 weeks, everyone says that they would prefer the gift card with the later expiration date and that they assume they’ll be more likely to use a later expiring card. In reality, in the test cases quoted in the article, people were five times more likely to use the card with the shorter expiration.

In other words, creating a shorter time horizon (as long as it seems a legitimate shortened time horizon) for a decision actually increases purchases. The article goes on to explain that you can leverage this pattern of thinking by connecting it to combined purchases (make a decision early for this purchase and you earn money toward another related purchase), short-term promotions, tiered shopping experiences, etc. Finally, people typically spend a little more than whatever the gift card is worth, so you increase purchases that way as well.

Okay, long way to saying that if luxury retailers are using such mechanisms to get people in the door and buying more in a down economy, perhaps we could think of similar things. What about for ERP/visit days gift cards to the bookstore that expire within a week or two? At the worst, they don’t buy anything or maybe leave with JBU paraphernalia that spreads the JBU image. At best, they buy books for their classes that help them lock in their decision. What about as an addition or a replacement to a deposit, we offer cards with amounts that they have to use for copies/cafeteria purchases within one semester. If they come to JBU, they get “money” that they may or may not spend, but it gives them added incentive to make the big purchase in order to be able to use the discount cards for their other costs at JBU?

Anyway, just some thoughts from my random reading.

The end of Blackboard & the rise of Facebook U?

Gotta give the guy credit for moxy, huh? The idea is free courses and free textbooks via a “Facebook U” social-networking format that replaces Blackboard and all other higher education course management technology so that anyone, anywhere can enroll. If you want to get actual academic credit, you pay a monthly subscription fee. Hmm . . .

http://www.greentreegazette.com/minute/load.aspx?art=1473

Privatization of Public Universities?

I’ve long wondered when some of our major public universities would cut their ties with the state and become “private.” Michigan, Virginia, Colorado, Vermont, and a few others appear pretty close to that line already, and with the current budget downturn, that trend will likely continue. The University of Michigan, for example, gets only 7% of its revenue from the state, and Vermont gets over 70% of its revenue from tuition. If this lottery initiative results in our share of revenue from the state going up significantly, how much different would we look from those schools in terms of our revenue percentages? Not much.

And what does that mean for JBU’s future direction? My first reaction is that UofA will more and more become our main competitor. Already, our main competition at the undergraduate level is the UofA and its Honors College. At the graduate level, it’s also the UofA and its increasingly flexible programs, such as the low-residency MBA that I was in. As Pat’s been warning, how much longer before the UofA follows this graduate trajectory into flexible models for other adult students (i.e. our Advance students)?

This possible scenario furthers my convictions that we should be much more explicit in our various materials about how we compare to the UofA and also that we may need to adopt more of their pricing models (keep tuition low and charge more in fees) in order to make that comparison even more discernible. Just my two cents.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i34/34a01601.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

"Free recall," the tried and tested method of learning?

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i34/34a00101.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

This doesn't seem that controversial, but I guess anything "old" is considered passe in some circles.

Post-Christian America?

From the USA Today story contradicting the Newsweek and other versions of the U.S. slouching toward agnosticism and atheism. The real story, apparently, is the rise of Hispanics and megachurches.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/post-christian-not-even-close.html

Over the past two decades, I have taught the "Christian America" debate to hundreds of students in my Religious Studies courses. When we finish our discussion, I call the question. My Christian students almost invariably describe the United States as a multicultural nation of religions, but my Jewish students tell me you have to be blind (or Christian) not to see that this is a Christian country. Here Christmas, not Passover, is a national holiday, and the only question about our presidents' religious affiliation seems to be from which Christian denomination they will come.

Mark Silk, who runs Trinity College's Program on Public Values, which released the latest ARIS report, agrees that the news media were napping when they spun secularization straw out of the gold in this report. For him, the rise of the "nones" is old news. From 1990 to 2001, the portion of those who said "none" when asked, "What is your religion, if any?" jumped from 8.2% to 14.1%. Over the past seven years, that figure basically flatlined, rising less than a percentage point to 15.0%.

The real news in this data, Silk says, is a shift in the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism from the Northeast to the Southwest, and in the process from whites to Hispanics. The other big story, he told me, is the continued displacement of mainline Protestants by born-again Christians, who now constitute 34% of the U.S. population. The "non-denominational Christian" category that populates U.S. megachurches has exploded from under 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to in excess of 8 million today.

When I remarked that this hardly looks like a picture of a post-Christian country, Silk, who edits a newsletter called "Religion and the News," agreed, but warned me not to be too hopeful about diverting this story midstream. "You can tell the truth," he said, "just don't expect anybody to pay attention."

Women vs. Men in promotion processes

The basic summary appears to be that a combination of “microdifferences” (child care, less emphasis on research, etc.) amounts to substantially slower times to promotion for women at research institutions, even in a field such as English where women are more highly represented.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/27/mla

Why Colleges Fail?

Interesting study looking at what happened to all 824 private colleges that existed in 1975. 11% failed in the last 34 years. Why did some survive and others fail?

1) Endowment per student was more important to survival than net tuition per student.

2) Larger and more selective colleges had higher survival rates, but running G&PS programs (i.e. diversification?) mattered less.

3) Religious schools had higher survival rates.

Of course, this study looked only at survival and not at other questions like which schools entered the market in the last 34 years and which schools became more viable over that time period.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/17/closing

The End of Philosophy?

Interesting argument, as is often the case with David Brooks, this time about how moral reasoning actually works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=2

I should note that JBU's resident philosopher, Jay Bruce, as well an anonymous poster, argued that Brooks is simply rehashing David Hume, and making something of a hash or the rehash as well.