They’re the Rodney Dangerfield of higher education (“no respect, I tell ya, no respect!”). Many elitists who hold those hard-earned degrees from fancy four-year universities have condescending perceptions that community colleges are those loser schools for remedial teenagers and 20-something drop-outs.
During an interesting after-work social conversation a couple of weeks ago, Houston Community College President Dr. Bill Harmon and Public Relations Director Andre Humphery enlightened me as they hailed several HCC graduates who are heading for advanced programs at Rice University, Columbia University and other prestigious schools. They boasted about HCC’s extensive roster of private industry partnerships for workforce development – including a collaboration to develop an HCC-style school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Harmon and Humphery also bragged that HCC has the highest percentage of international students of any community college in the U.S. Ironically, National Public Radio aired a feature report on that accomplishment just this morning.
In fact, a few years ago I enrolled in HCC for a couple of night courses in advanced finite mathematics that I had not completed while previously attending my alma mater Syracuse University, where I had earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. I transferred the HCC credits to the University of Houston as prerequisites for a managerial statistics course in the MBA program.
Clearly, the time is overdue for community colleges to step up with pride like Harmon, Humphery and the HCC administration and squash the dumping ground stereotypes. The schools can greatly capitalize on the spotlight from Ivy League-educated President Barack Obama, who recently announced a ten-year plan to invest $12 billion to help the nation’s two-year institutions reach, teach and train more people for the jobs of the future.
Under Obama’s initiative, community colleges could qualify for “challenge grants” to give new programs a try, or expand training and counseling. Dropout rates would be addressed by designing programs to help students who want to earn an associate’s degree or transfer to a four-year institution do so. Money also would be spent to renovate outdated facilities or build new ones, and to develop online courses and make them freely available to students and others who want to use them.
As the federal money flows, I think there also needs to be an increased flow of communication – not just media stories, but authentic and continual engagements, interactions and conversations among all the community college publics: current and potential students, parents, educators, researchers, alumni, donors, media, legislators, business/industry groups, global communities.
The cheap, easy and flexible technologies of Web 2.0 social media are just the right tools to leverage as community colleges are transformed into engines of opportunity and prosperity.
A blog should be the simplest element to jump-start any community college social media plan. Linked to the home page of a college web site, the blog will serve as a platform for online conversation about particular aspects of school news.
Network sites and social media news releases (SMRs) can be used to publish news headlines, provide admissions updates and tips, discover opportunities for media coverage and highlight university facts and updates.
Incorporating notification tools such as real simple syndication (RSS) feeds, email and text messaging can also facilitate and enhance participation in conversations. Community colleges can also use social networks to monitor their name brand. To reach students, adult learners and other stakeholders who are among the increasing ranks on Facebook, community colleges can start pages and groups for alumni, news, events and student organizations.
Twitter can be used to feed instant online updates to users. A Twitter search for mentions of a given community college and appropriate tweet replies from one or more designated school representatives will encourage engagement in community colleges’ social networks.
It’s all interconnected viral marketing to create word-of-mouth at virtually little or no cost. And for many community colleges accustomed to doing more with less anyway, what could be better?
By embracing the culture of online communications, community colleges can heighten respectful and reverent public perceptions while generating value-added outcomes to yield tremendous, long-lasting social and economic dividends.
LINKS
News coverage on the American Graduation Initiative (through American Association of Community Colleges)http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Advocacy/aginitiative/Pages/newscoverage.aspx
“Houston Community College Has Global Appeal” (NPR)http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105984699
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