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Industry Group Sponsors College Course To Create Fake Blog
Scott Jaschik writes "At Hunter College, professors are debating the ethics of a course in which an industry group paid for a class to develop a fake student who would write a fake blog to discourage other students from buying knockoff products. The controversy involves both commercial interference with academic freedom and the ethics of 'guerilla marketing.'"
The blog finally admitted that it was fake: http://encounterheidi.blogspot.com/2007/05/here-is-catch-i-am-totally-not-real.html . I love how the students who created this blog chose the ditsy valley girl stereotype to convey their message, and stuck with the persona 'till the bitter end: "Here is the catch- I am totally not real!"...the bolding was me.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Authenticity and originality are key to the youth demographic and they know it. The problem is that ads have failed at those for a long time. Some ads can still do it through humor and strange premises (like the old spice ads I love so much). Unfortunately, people are smart, and copying another ad campaign's success backfires more often than not.
It's a problem that's crept up on them for the last few years. Frankly, I'm shocked that corporations are struggling to look authentic and original.
The "fake blog" portion of the story is compelling, but it isn't the whole story. all in all, the actions of the university and the coalition (the IACC) were pretty repugnant. The school engineered the course to teach the industry viewpoint and ensured (via industry observers) that the professor did not deviate from the talking points. when the story initially broke, the school decided that it was an internal matter and didn't merit any outside scrutiny.
The professor in question voiced real ethical problems with the course but was basically told to shut up and teach--because he didn't have tenure that was pretty much his only option. The job market for PhD's without tenure isn't exactly robust.
Never mind that this was basically taxpayer subsidized indoctrination.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I would love to know if the students also had to pay for the class, just like they do for any other class. Also did the students get a full outline of the class before they signed up for it, like most other classes offer?
Sounds to me like this is a case of double dipping. The school gets the corporation to pay for the class, and then they turn around and get the students to pay for the class as well. I'm sure every University and College would love to be paid double for each class they teach. Sounds like this is more about the greed of the school, than it is about actual teaching.
Also where is the state on this? I don't know about their state but the state of Missouri has Sunshine laws. Basically if you take state or government money, then everything has to be open and clearly detailed about what you do with the money and everything associated with it. You can't have secret board meetings, or secretly spend the money on anything. Everything in the school has to be open and transparent, even school groups that receive money from the school, since they get it from the government.
Sounds like a *HUGE* violation of the "Sunshine laws" to say that this whole review, etc. is an internal school matter. It certainly would not be the case in Missouri.
Why not? I mean, there are interesting courses to take but for most students at large universities the course description doesn't really provide a very good guide as to the nature of the course and the expectations. I'm not interested in filler courses completely--they tend to make me not want to show up and to ride on prior knowledge but I will take them for a few reasons:
1. Prereq's: I don't want to take into to biology in order to take a zoology course. I don't want to take (this is probably a better example) Psych 101 in order to take a course on the pathology of brain disorders and the functions of the brain on a chemical level. I know that for some of these courses I can have the prerequisites waived by the instructor, but I don't want to have to go through that with every class.
2. Unknown intended course audience: Is that course on Intermediate Finance aimed at econ majors? Business majors? Is it a requirement to graduate from any particular school? Those will impact how the class is taught and to what level of detail and that is pretty important to me.
3. Non-zero cost of searching: It is actually pretty hard to spend time and sit in on classes at the beginning of the semester to get a feel for how they will meet your needs. I can't look at 20 classes outside of my major in order to see which books are required, what level of involvement is expected and what I will learn. That is just simple too many add/drop forms to work through and too many scheduling problems to work out.
I don't mean to say that students take filler courses that they hate (but this is often the case), but I do mean to say that arbitrary breadth requirements by universities lead to large numbers of students taking Astronomy 100 and so forth.