The "Marketing" of Higher Education in the Ninties


    Every institution of Higher Learning works on its public image.  You want
parents to know that there thousands of dollars will be spent on a solid
education, but you want the kids to know that you have a lively and fun
place.  It's a delicate balance.

    Some years ago NYU suffered a bad blow to its image in a Woody
Allen film.  The movie was "Everything You Always Wanted to Know
About Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask."  I'm sure you'll recall the scene.

    Allen was a young rake putting the moves on a college-age woman.
We viewers were "inside" his head during this encounter.  What we saw
was a NASA-style control room full of those nerdy guys in white
shirts, wearing earphones and seated at computer terminals.  They
were controlling his actions and monitoring hers.

    When she said that she went to NYU a cheer went up in the
control room and the leader of the group observed, "We're gonna
score tonight!"  That was a cinematic moment impressed upon a generation of
horny teenage males.  Whatever else we knew about NYU --and it was precious
little in most cases-- we knew you could score there.

Flash Forward to the 90s

    According to an article in last week's Chronicle of Higher Education (that's
THE trade mag of the Higher Ed BIZ) NYU has new problems.  It seems somebody has set
up a World-Wide Web site that has a "spy" cam in an NYU dorm room.  According to
the article one can go to the site and see "scantily clad female students
'romping' in their dormitory room at New York University...".

    The article goes on to say: "Images on the free part of the site show
several women wearing little more than tank tops with N.Y.U. logos in a room
decorated with an N.Y.U.pennant and sticker.  Viewers who pay a fee are promised
access to 'uncensored action'."

    NYU has filed a suit against the owners of the Web site claiming that it is
"tarnishing" the schools image and infringing on its trademarks.

    As research (technically it's "competitor research") I looked up the Web
site.  (I also did this for my friends on the HUMOR list who wouldn't be caught
dead at WWW.SPY7.COM.  You can, indeed, see the NYU logos, but how anyone could
claim that the site is realistic is beyond me.

    In the first place, this clearly isn't a dorm room.  There's not a single
junk food wrapper, fast food bag or piza box in any of the pictures.
Furthermore, the "dorm room" only contains females.  There's not a single guy
sitting around with them.

    I wonder if Woody Allen had anything to do with this...



Thanks to Jim Mica