Two years ago, Kentuckians got a pep talk every time they watched a TV ad where a goofy guy tries to climb up an escalator that's going down: to reach new heights in life, it suggested, change course and go back to school.

 

key elements in the ad have changed. A feminine voiceover has replaced a masculine one, and the language now aims to get a school-age crowd to aim for college.

In a bid to boost college enrollment rates, states are sniffing out low-cost ways to get their people off the couch and into admissions offices. Pooling ad content for other states to adapt, for instance, can make a $100,000 ad available for only about $20,000.

Creative cost-saving and alternative financing measures are in the works as states recover from budget cuts that have hampered efforts to do "college access marketing." Skeptics question tactics and costs, but supporters seem convinced that ads can help inspire pivotal life choices for the better.

"Every time we ran an ad, we saw requests for information spike," says James Applegate, vice president for academic affairs at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. And at least some callers apparently followed through: since the effort began in 1998, enrollment in Kentucky postsecondary education has climbed 25%.

Other signs point to more growth:

• Georgia, West Virginia and Tennessee this year began running ads to boost college enrollment. Before this year, ads had run in Texas, North Carolina, California, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

• The National Governors Association is requiring 10 states to launch similar campaigns in exchange for receiving nearly $20 million this fall in high school reform grants.

• In 2004, 15 Southern states formed a consortium for sharing college-related ad content, and all six New England states are preparing and seeking financing for their own campaigns.

• The Lumina Foundation for Education pays for ads in 18 states to promote events to help potential college students fill out financial aid forms. The target group: minority and low-income students whose parents did not attend college and therefore might find the process dauntingly unfamiliar.

These efforts aim to remedy a situation that troubles educators and policymakers alike. Although U.S. educational attainment is higher than ever, only 40% of ninth-graders nationwide go on to graduate from high school and immediately enroll in college, according a 2004 estimate from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. That needs to rise in order to stem the tide of outsourcing jobs overseas, says Ann Coles, director of the Pathways to College Network at the Education Resources Institute in Boston.

"The rapid changes that come as a result of new and developing technologies require higher skill levels" than in the past for success in the labor market, Coles says. "If we're to be able to bring back these jobs to the United States, one of the things we're going to need is a better-educated workforce."

Coles notes that a growing percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds in the USA are minorities, who as a group traditionally haven't attained as much higher education as white students.

What's needed, she says, is "social marketing" akin to the anti-smoking "Truth" campaign, which researchers have declared successful in keeping hundreds of thousands of young people from taking up the habit.

Not everyone is convinced it works. Lynda Bergsma produced health videos in the 1980s and early '90s but now concentrates on teaching people to think critically about what they see and hear in the media.

"You can try to educate people all you want with video, brochures or whatever, and you can raise their awareness of an issue, but you seldom change behavior," says Bergsma, associate director of the Rural Health Office at the University of Arizona.

College access marketers concede their task is a complex one that requires more than ads. Hospitable campuses, for instance, must be ready to receive students who arrive with trepidation to take a peek. And marketers need to know their target audience well.

"Social marketing can work, but fairly often doesn't," says Kathleen Seiders, associate professor of marketing at Boston College. She says for boosting college enrollment, it is a "necessary tool" that can work if tailored so that "the message is one of inclusion, that this will be an accepting and supportive community."

College-bound students tend to rely on family, not their high schools, to guide the college application process, says Leslie Siskin, research professor of education at New York University. If such guidance is missing at home, she says, marketing becomes crucial.

"How else would you reach them?" Siskin asks. "It's about showing other possibilities. It's about awareness. It's about what can be. Advertising is often quite good at that."

Though college access marketers point to data suggesting it works, lawmakers haven't always found funds for it. Kentucky, for instance, didn't renew public funding after 2003 for what had been a $4.2 million campaign.

Now Applegate, like his counterparts in other states, is preparing to court the private sector and charitable foundations to help pay for a new round of ads. But to reach the goal of 800,000 enrolled in college by 2020 (up from 402,000 in 2000) he'll need to convince lawmakers that it's worth every penny.

"We're targeting groups that don't have strong private-sector advocates," Applegate says. "Undereducated adults, minorities and low-income kids in middle and high schools ... they're not groups that have powerful constituencies out there, all champing at the bit to take care of them."

USATODAY.com

Posted 8/30/2005