alumni futures

Your Alumni Association: Making You Feel Like a Total Loser

I said I was taking a break from blogging until later this month, but this was so easy, I couldn't help it.

In March we saw a few alumni-related tweets. More recently, the following Twitter-using college graduates expressed a shared notion: they feel like losers because of others' (perceived) success.

The first commenter modestly avoids using the first-person:

The next one is more direct. And honest:

And finally, this question pretty much answers itself:

Are we making alumni feel bad by featuring "elite achievers" in our publications and communications? Or does that baggage belong to the self-described "losers"?

Credit Card Transparency: U.S. Legislation May Affect Alumni Affinity Contracts

[Updated 28 May, 2009: The Credit Card Act of 2009 (H.R. 627) has been signed into law, and includes disclosure requirements for alumni association affinity credit card contracts. The language, according to CASE, is identical to the language mentioned in my original post below, and requires credit card companies to disclose marketing agreements with alumni associations and affiliated foundations. The agreements covered are any of the agreements where a student has been issued a card, regardless of whether cards are marketed to students.

The disclosure requirement says that U.S. institutions of higher education must

publicly disclose any contract or other agreement made with a card issuer or creditor for the purpose of marketing a credit card.

While it doesn't mention alumni associations per se, the breadth of the language will likely make all or almost all marketing agreements subject to disclosure.

Thanks to CASE's Brain Flahaven for keeping us all updated.]

CASE's director of government and foundation relations, Brian Flahaven, recently circulated an update on legislation introduced by two US congressmen. According to Brian,

...the Student Credit Card Transparency Act of 2009...would require credit card companies to disclose to Congress their contracts, terms and agreements on affinity credit card programs with colleges, universities and alumni associations. 

Although focused on schools marketing credit cards to students, the bill's broad language might require credit card companies to disclose all their agreements with colleges and universities. 

If you're at a US alumni association with an affinity credit card program, how might this affect you? CASE believes that the legislation, if voted into law, might result in unintended, but negative, consequences.

Brian adds that it's unclear when Congress might take up the bill for discussion or vote. And the Senate is working on its own version of related legislation, and CASE will let us know if any language from the House bill mentioned above makes it into the Senate's final product.

Have an opinion or concern about the pros or cons of these proposed laws? Have anything to share about the changing role of alumni affinity agreements? Share your feedback in a comment.  

Meanwhile, CASE has a web page for monitoring legislation and regulations that may affect higher education advancement:

CASE Legislative & Regulatory Affairs page

Also check out the CASE Issues Watch

Note that I'll be taking a break from blogging for a couple of weeks. See you late in May.

Will Online Students Become Engaged Alumni?

A headline on page 11 of the May-June 2009 issue of CASE Currents caught my eye: Studying in Cyberspace: Will the growing numbers of online students become committed alumni? [Requires CASE membership and log in]. Good question – but the column doesn't address it. The co-authors (a professor and the advancement VP at Babson College) make some observations about the scale and growth of online learning in the United States, and provide a brief description of which institutions are embracing online courses and why.

The final four paragraphs are labeled Online Students as Alumni, but the main observation is hardly new: online learners' "potential as committed students and alumni is waiting to be tapped." The authors write that we need "to educate them as students about what alumni can contribute."

It is prudent to educate students about "what alumni can contribute," but many (perhaps most) students are more concerned about their own needs than they are about the school's. Students want to know how their relationship with the institution is going to benefit them. 

As the article suggests, while online students do "demonstrate a high level of commitment to their education," this doesn't necessarily translate into a high level of commitment to the organization that delivered the courses. It seems likely to me that online and on-campus students alike will increasingly avoid the specialized course management software designed to meet instructors' and registrars' needs (in the same way that alumni ignore our so-called online communities). 

Interaction with other learners, including information sharing, direct communication and socializing won't happen in course management sites. It will take place via the services that people are using already: blogs and microblogs, photo and video sharing sites, and online business networks. As Dan Guhr said in a comment about last week's posting, when it comes to school-guided interaction, "it seems relative value has declined because other sources for knowledge acquisition and networking have become available."

The Currents piece suggests that with the right data, "alumni leaders can...reinforce the bonds and community that we have built with our online students." But this takes for granted a more challenging piece of the puzzle: building "bonds and community" between the institution and the students in the first place – a job made all the more difficult with an audience of distance learners. 

Connecting with people online is easy. Mattering to them is another problem altogether.

Can online degree programs provide something like the alumni cohesion, relevance and community that residential programs engender? 

Do they need to?

Leave a comment.

[Photo via Creative Commons from Flickr user Matthew Gilbert, an instructor of online courses.]