Effect of Media
How has the media influenced the regulatory environment in the education industry?
Kenneth,
Great approach! I respect the efforts to address concerns head on and for leadership to be available to students when needs arise.
Traci Lee
As a result of reports by the media regarding private colleges, it is important to remember that in the courts of public opinion, we are guilty until proven innocent. If complaints are aired to the media, be they true or fraudulent, we are considered guilty until we prove innocence.
Therefore I choose to take the high road and address these areas immediately with new students. During our Orientation I introduce myself as the Executive Director and I explain my role in the campus. I also make sure that the students know where my office is located.
They are instructed to follow the chain of command within our campus, but I want them to know that they always have recourse in the event that they feel they are not receiving a fair hearing. Obviously my goal is to always be able to secure a resolution within the confines of our organization.
Michaela,
You really hit the nail on the head - many of the issues from disgruntled students seem to stem back to their academic or even financial challenges faced during their program of study. Your efforts to provide services to alleviate these issues should reduce the chances of a student complaining or stirring things up with media. It's great to see a school taking on the responsibility to assist students proactively!
Traci Lee
As the Director of Education for my school, I see how the negative impact the media has on Career Schools. Our school works very hard to have a positive impact on the community by having our students involved in community activities. Our student participate in back to school activities involving students getting free school supplies, haircuts, and dental care. Our students participate by autoclaving instruments, taking down health histories, obtaining vital signs, and assisting chair side as needed.
Our school is very student oriented. Everyone in our school is involved in the success of each student. The first day of class I meet the students at orientation and discuss how important their success is to me. I offer them assistance with organizing their notebooks to teaching them study skills and well as tutoring. As the industry has changed more students are being home schooled and haven't learned good study techniques or how to write written report properly. These are some of the services offered to our students to help them be successful. The majority of our students did poorly in high school and need to gain confidence in their ability to succeed. My staff and I work very hard at giving this type of support to our students.
There are times when a student isn't successful and threatens the school with the media. The majority of the time it is a student who was unable to accept the outcome of their actions. For example, poor grades or attendance issues.
As a whole, our school supports our students when a problem arises and offers encouragement and hope as needed. This approach has worked well for us.
Dr. Childers,
Thanks for your positive comments. I agree that the upside of the situation has enabled us all to refocus on mission and core values as well as reaffirm the dedication we have, as a learning community, to serve the career training needs of our student populations. There are, as you reference, some institutions that have negatively impacted the sector, but I too believe that for the most part the sector remains true to its cause.
Jay Hollowell
The media has influnced the education industry. Some negative and some positive. We have seen the results of some schools who have had poor judgement. The positive side is that it made all of us ask could this happen at our school. I think we should always inspect what we expect. Bad judgement will always be around and for those schools that are proactive with internal audits can prevent and correct the bad judgement.
Amber,
Good point about the political influence. It's certainly that time of year right now where we hear a lot from the politicians and current events influence what they may focus on when campaigning.
Traci Lee
I believe that the media has influenced the regulatory environment in the education industry, specifically private for-profit institutions. Focusing on more stringent standards and outcomes. Most of the media outlets, such as news stations and periodicals portray private for-profit, whether large or small in the same negative light. Politicians, also play a large role in the negativity regarding for-profit institutions.
Brian,
Great point - social media is playing an increasing role in the visibility of issues which are "unfiltered". It is interesting to see different school strategies on handling these - some opt to respond, some opt to ignore and some may not even be aware of what is posted about them. I think this will be an area to watch and develop solid strategies on for schools going forward.
Traci Lee
One major branches of media that has had an explosive impact on our industry, is social media. Now customers can cut out the middleman and complain directly to the company via Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, ect.. My organization has had to become much more proactive in addressing a students concern much faster than before social media. One negative review can permanently damage an organization's image. Social media is almost worse than a newspaper, because they usually do some sort of due-diligence before writing a story.
I like this idea. Based on this, I think my school should implement distributing a document which lists the chain-of-command to the students. This document should explain to them to whom to address their questions or concerns. For example, 1- the Instructor, 2 - the Program Director, 3 - the Dean, 4 - the Director of the School.
The media has influenced the regulatory environment in the education industry by exposing policy enforcement and regulatory inconsistencies and also at times data misrepresentations from a small percentage of educational providers. This exposure has led to increase scrutiny by academic accrediting and federal agencies.
Johanna,
I agree so much with your comment of utilizing the media as an asset. While it may be more difficult to entice publication/broadcast of the "good" news, it is important that we continue to feed the positive successes and regulatory information to leverage the public exposure as much as possible.
Traci Lee
The media can definitely have an impact on the regulatory environment in the education industry either positively or negatively. As many of the students in this course have highlighted, it is common for a disgruntled student, employee or community member to quickly call the news media when they feel they have been mistreated in some way. Having a newspaper and marketing background myself, I think it is important to remember that the media can also be helpful to the education industry if we choose to employ it as an asset. Keeping the local media partners apprised of new regulations and how we are striving to meet them as well as boasting our successes will help in being proactive rather than reactive.
Juliet,
Great point - and that may be true of many items that we see in the media. It's a good reminder for us to put news stories in perspective and give context to the reality of the situation as a whole rather than "stereotyping" which the public may be prone to do.
Traci Lee
The media plays a big part in shining light onto current regulatory issues, but also someitmes provides a "sensationalist" type of attention to certain issues. For instance, at this time, some schools are being sanctioned by the Department of Education for issues specifically based upon attendance verifications and grade inflation. I am not sure that this is a huge issue for many schools, but it would appear that this is a big issue for all schools if you only paid attention to the media attention that is beign paid to the issue.
I believe that the Telemarketing tools we have in place such as the "Do no Call List" protect the prospective students from aggressive forms of recruitment, and at the same time enhances the ability of higher Institutions to target the best markets and demographic possible to maintain the placement rates where they need to be from a compliance vantage point.
Definitely, the media influenced the regulatory environment in a very negative way, the education industry I has been affected in a negative way
Susan,
Transparency is a great way to ensure a school is "doing the right thing" as it creates a culture of ensuring anything done can been shared openly.
Traci Lee
