I am Matthew Williams and You are Not

These are strange times for higher-education. The world is changing. Fast. The new generation of students filling classrooms are people who have never known the world with out the internet. They have experienced terrorist attacks in the mainland and have witnessed colossal governmental failure in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina rained down destruction of a magnitude we have never seen in our time.

There is, along with this new breed of student, also a paradigmatic shift on the horizon for education. As the world starts to move faster than bureaucracy can handle, old ways are being jettisoned and we are starting to take a very hard and brutally honest look at who we are in academia and just what we are doing.

This requires hard work and even harder decision making. Yet, the school I work for...the University of Minnesota...has elected to rise to this 21st century challenge NOT by igniting a new culture of collaboration and cooperation amongst disciplines, by NOT seeking out new ways to address old problems, by NOT providing world class professional development opportunities to faculty...

No, the University of Minnesota, one of the largest three R-1 institutions in North America, is not doing any of the above. What are we doing? We're calling in the PR specialists. We're going to solve all this by marketing.

A few days ago, I got this e-mail in my mailbox. And I quote, "I want to invite you to be among the first to become “Driven to Discover™� – a new way of talking about the University of Minnesota that will ignite the public’s interest and build support for our mission. Driven to Discover will soon appear on signs and sidewalks on campus, in books and brochures, in newspaper and TV advertising, and in our words and deeds."

...

My God. We even have taken this so seriously as to trademark this. But this is not all...just in case anyone was worried that we did not spend a lot of money parading this ridiculous slogan in front of focus groups...

"Driven to Discover grew from conversations and consultations with hundreds of people throughout the University. It’s about what we do and who we are. More than a marketing campaign, this is a movement, one that will focus our efforts, change our vocabulary, and paint a full and robust picture of our University. Driven to Discover will connect people with the University of Minnesota through their heads and hearts."

So this is how we are going to move boldly ahead. Not by actually doing anything, but rather by trying to spin what we already do as something far better than it really is. The message we're really sending to students and taxpayers alike is that...frankly...we're a big joke. We don't get it. This is already the talk of the student body, and not in a positive light. I don't know how many times the U of MN has been placed at the butt end of jokes recently because of this, but frankly it is starting to make me sick.

If we want to look at the problem of our freshman drop out rate, our low satisfaction rate among graduates, our lack of diversity, our lack of creativity and ingenuity when it comes to designing classes and curriculums, a feel good marketing scheme will get us nothing. We're not fooling anyone. If we were truly a world class institution, we would not need a PR team to convince everyone of this fact. Somewhere, somehow...we as an institution have forgotten what it means to be leaders and have settled on grabbing at straws.