If Only

It would be easy to attack Lord Mandleson’s recent pronouncements on Higher Education by attacking his position as our un-elected overlord and de facto Prime Minister, however despite New Labour’s tactic of ‘play the man not the ball’ should not open the door for the rest of us to sink to such. Instead we should attack the same old tired clap track nonsense about Universities not doing enough for working class students.

Time and time again, be it the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for whatever department universities fall under this month, the President of the NUS, or indeed some unhinged Another Union is Possible wing nut, the same old stick is brought out with which to smack universities over the head with. It is depressing that my very first article on  Live was essentially about the same issue: using university bashing as a smoke screen to deflect from more fundamental and systemic issues in our education system.

To look behind the smoke and mirrors of the ‘press release politics’ we’ve experienced since 1997 is to see a Orwellian world in which new words define new ideas and realities, and the world in which the rest of us live becomes increasingly disconnected from the one that is described by the politicians.

For if all of those annual announcements on how wonderfully well this years crop of A-level or GCSE students had fared were true, then the best universities would have a childlike ease in selecting working class applicants that meet the entry requirements instead of those same students being crowded out by ‘evil’ children who’s parents paid.

If the improvements were genuine then the change would happen, if the change is manufactured and statistical, then the façade falls once the government looses the power to define success.

Fundamentally the problem comes not down to universities failing the working class, the hard truth is that the government has failed both the working class and society as a whole by not using 14 years of education to produce candidates able to get into the ‘elite universities’.

Attacking universities means not having to address the failings of government. Attacking ‘elite’ universities belies the acceptance that the rapid broadening of the HE sector has not built institutions producing respected or indeed employable graduates. And to be honest, furthering the stereotype that elite graduates are both entitled to and, and readily receive, high paid dream jobs is particularly spiteful with record graduate unemployment.

If only students had a strong national voice with which to challenge the weak premises that underlay Lord Mandelson’s comments. If only there was a national organisation that represented the 5 million FE students whom the data shows have the worst chance of all groups at getting into a good university, or the two million HE students soon to find themselves in the dole queue. If only.

Scaleable Twitter-based System for more Efficient Markets for a Charity Shop Network

-mashing up the ideals of freecycle and the infrastructure of twitter for the benefit of small charity networks. This article is taken from sister blog Project Crimson (linky) under a creative commons licence.

The fishermen off the coast in Kerela in 1997 showed how access to new forms of communication and the knowledge transfer it produces, can lead to more efficient markets and more profitable selling. But what does this mean for the third sector?

Well it can be argued that the pre-mobile phone fisherman of the coast of Kerela was in a similar state of information asymmetry as a present day branch of a charity shop. The charity shop’s ‘catch’ is it’s weekly donations from the local public, and much like the old fisherman, it’s market is often restricted, mostly to the same shop the good are donated. However as the fishermen learnt, better knowledge of the supply and demand in other markets led to better and more reliable profits all round.

Grounding this idea more firmly in our example of the Charity shop we will walk through a example of where this idea of communication breeding market efficiency can be put in place for a network of charity shops.

>>>Continue reading at Project Crimson

For discussion: The individual as the Micro-Corporation & the Micro-Bailout

Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. Much of the criticism levelled at the various forms of bank bailout (from economists rather than tabloid writers) has decried the heightening of the moral hazard produced as a result.

In brief the worry is this: capitalism relies on individuals/colorations calculating the most efficient use of their money in a risk vs reward payoff; even though it is not a zero-sum game the creative destruction of failed enterprises is a prerequisite for continued change and growth; the motivation for managing capital (money) well is the risk of failure resulting in it’s loss; without the fear of failure capital can be employed in the riskiest regardless of the consequences; government underwriting of this fiscal and monetary collapse means that banks will calculate that in the future they will bailed out again, leading them to take on even riskier positions in the future.

That may not the most accurate or precise definition but it will do the job I hope.

Any how, the question has struck me as to the applicability of this theory to other walks of life, namely does the state create a moral hazard through employment insurance?

The only common capital we all share is our bodies and the ability to turn our activity into useful economic output. We are in effect micro-corporations (although in fact it is more accurate to say that a body corporate is actually just a legal construction of a person that is not physically manifest), and we theoretically chose how best to employ our working capital to maximise gain.

I say theoretical because often we have far less choice than we’d like. I’d choose to be the CEO of the Sutton Trust, but that option is not on the table, some people would choose to invest a few years at university in order to increase the market rate for their work through specialisation, but may not be able to make the upfront investment required to get the long term benefit.

In every day life then the decisions faced are more mundane but like a bank faced with choices as to its strategy, an individual faces different risk paths. To disagree with one’s boss at the risk of trouble, to quit one job to pursue a more exciting opportunity, to change careers to something more rewarding.

But the question arises, is there a moral hazard in that I know that if I fail, I will always receive the ‘micro-bailout’ of jobseekers allowance? In effect the state enters into a long position with me, betting that if it provides me with revenue for a while, I can restructure my CV back into a new job, and the taxes will eventually pay off the government’s investment, plus a nice return. Is one’s choice about exercising the freedom to work for whom one chooses slightly altered by the fact that one will not end up starving, unlike a medieval peasant who chooses to give up tilling the crops and instead decides they’d rather join an exciting new start-up in the crusading industry?

Does the social safety net cause people to take risks, or allow them to? I have no idea but it is an interesting question

On Marketing Democracy

NB Essay produced for course, not whilst at KCLSU, probably a bit out of date and some figure may not be 100% accurate. More for the discussion of democracy as a product

Democracy as the mechanism of expression of the will of the sovereign polity of a students union in the most sacrosanct tenant of the student movement, but is it a product? Arguably it must be the most important product that any student union markets successfully since it bestows legitimacy on all its other actions. Much like a government at a general election, or a US presidential candidate, a student union seeks a strong popular mandate to drive it forward and to re-affirm its sovereignty.

But can a ‘democracy’ be treated as a product, and marketed as such? Through the examination of the product and the marketing efforts at KCLSU that accompany elections, we shall see that ‘democracy’ is treated somewhat like a product, but more successful outcomes could be obtained through a better application of marketing theory. However due to the rather unique position of a student’s union, i.e. a statutory obligation with a single source of funds, there is not much impact to be had by marketing of democracy on fundraising.

The Product

It is not immediately obvious that it possible to condense such a nebulous set of values as the cluster of ideas and actions that are ‘democracy’. Fundamentally the first step in seeking to market democracy is to try and distill democracy in the term laid out in marketing theory, however this is no easy task.

The goods-service continuum as laid out by Shostack (Shostack 1977) makes it easier to classify the ‘product’ of democracy than more rigid goods, services, ideas triumvirate. Where does democracy fall on this spectrum? Clearly since the product has no direct tangible artifact, it must clearly fall on the extreme side of intangible dominant. However, conforming to one of the rules of product composition as laid out in Bruce (2005), there are latent physical goods and services, and without these it would be impossible to construct a narrative about democracy to sell to students.

The goods in this case are the elected students, the President and the Vice-Presidents who become the artifacts produced by this election. This leads to the service, which is student representation provided by these elected students, representation at college, local and national levels. The broadest stroke is reserved for the idea, that of participative representative democracy as a means of concentrating and communicating the collective will. For those that already buy-in to this idea, the sell comes down to the individuals running, however to the majority of people, the primary purpose of the marketing effort is to demonstrate the importance of these ideas to both KCLSU and to their academic experience.

How is the product marketed?

The election ranks along side Fresher’s week as the two most important annual events for KCLSU, and therefore historically the election has always produced a large marketing effort. The marketing plan for the election calls for two phases of marketing, the first leading up to the close of nominations is designed to entice students into putting themselves forward, the second phase is the get out the vote campaign, and will be the focus of this analysis.

Key facts

• Total student body is circa 21,500 students (exact figure not explicitly known to the students union, and there are annual fluctuations)
• Total number of ‘involved students’ stands at circa 7000 and represents any student who is ‘involved’ by way of club or society membership, is a registered user of our services (such as gym or academic advice), is a member of the casual student staff, or is an elected official
• Spring elections are for the important roles of Sabbatical Officer (the President and Vice-Presidents), and since 2006 for Trustees as well
• The period that voting was open was 7 days in 2006, 5 in 2007, and 3 in 2008
• Total votes in those years were 1564, 1603 & 2125 respectively
• 10% turnout target, which is considered high for a large student union, University of Manchester (more than 40,000 students) have consistently been at around 1% for the past 5 years, whereas Courtauld Institute of Art (with 456 students, of which half are undergraduate, half post-graduate) regularly gets 90% or higher
• No separate budget line for the elections, comes out of several budgets (Operating, Policy & Advocacy, Student Services, and Marketing), and organised by an elections working group

The marketing mix (Bruce, 2005) provides a useful framework to breakdown the product and it’s marketing, and it contains several components that should be taken into account when marketing a product.

Component	Details
Philosophy	The philosophy of the product is the central tenant of Student Unions, that ultimately the student body as a whole is sovereign over its union, and elections empower them to use their ownership to produce changes
Price	The price to the customer is free in terms of money, but costs a minute or two of time. The introduction of electronic voting has reduced the time taken to vote and has allowed for voting 24/7 over the internet, further reducing the time cost to the student. However the perception of many students is that even this low cost is too much since nothing is gained in return, and there is a reliance on buy-in to the philosophy rather than producing a gain for the customer. The cost to the organisation is high, in terms of time, staff, and resources, but this is a conscious decision commensurate with the importance of the product to the union.
Promotion	Takes the form of advertising in the student media, in all of our physical spaces, and prominent adverts in our virtual spaces (website, blogs etc). Also there is a form of coalition building involved since the candidates themselves act to promote the elections by promoting themselves.
Place	As described above voting largely takes place in our virtual paces, but the product is also marketed in our physical space using a bank of laptops to act as a voting booth, and the use of our spaces as places to promote the product.
People	The elections being so important to KCLSU, it involves many different groups of people: all permanent staff, including the elected sabbatical officers, get involved in ‘flash mobbing’ the various campuses at different times; many of our casual staff are also used to man voting booths; external promotional staff for flyering and manning voting booths, although at a higher cost than our own staff; as mentioned above, the candidates are also involved, although the controls on their behavior are tenuous and they present a risk to the brand of KCLSU and the elections.
Physical evidence	Reasons to vote are often left to the candidates, not enough is done by KCLSU to provide physical evidence of the importance of voting, or to reduce the proximity between the act of voting and the consequences, other than the results of the election itself.
Processes	The electronic voting system was introduced to streamline the process, and to make it far simpler to run. The process of nominations has also been shortened and simplified to reduce the burden on potential candidates.

Gap in the market(ing)

Thanks to the creation of a marketing department, and it’s subsequent growth, more marketing know-how has been brought to bear on the election process, but more could be done to successfully market democracy to the student body.

Having analyzed the product it is clear that KCLSU has relied too much on individual candidates to construct a positive narrative about democracy and its outcomes, rather than demonstrating thought leadership in the election process. Learning the lessons from past candidates, it can be seen that the often-unknowing use of case studies to demonstrate the impact elections have had in the past is a successful strategy in leading students up the ‘apathy staircase’, towards voting.

Rather than assigning KCLSU’s past successes to the organization, the election period could be used to highlight how past sabbaticals effectively campaigned for change, thus strengthening the value of the latent physical aspect of democracy. This in turn embellishes the narrative that voting is important to express a student’s desire for change, because voting produces four full-time individuals charged with delivering this change, and the case-studies show that not all election promises are vacuous.

However even if the above were perfected, the practical application of marketing theory must come up against the constraints of reality. Paraphrasing MacDonald (MacDonald 1998) a viable market segment must also be identified in order to be more successful in marketing the product. Is it realistic to expect all 21,500 students to vote in every election? Perhaps not, since UK Parliamentary General elections have seen a deep decline in participation, and are more important. So there is a need to examine the market, segment it, and try and maximize the impact of the marketing efforts.

Of the 21,500 students at King’s College, only 7,000 are ‘known’ to the union therefore two thirds of all students are totally uninvolved in their union. The cost to attempt to win each and every one of them is very high, since there is no relationship with their union and no reason to care about its leadership. The problem of union participation is arguably a failure in the brand KCLSU, or the marketing thereof, and not something that the product of democracy can solve.

So who then is the most opportune market for this product? It is surely the 7000 involved students who do have an existing relationship with the Union. To them there is a far greater chance of getting buy-in to the philosophy of the product for if you run a sports club you are more likely to care who gets put in charge of sports. However successful marketing has a balance of all aspects and it can be argued that in the past there has been too much made of the philosophy and not enough thought has gone into the other parts of the mix, and selling the narrative discussed above. But with a market segment identified, and a re-focus of resources onto those already involved with the union, a greater return should be seen.

It is important however not to abandon the other 14,000 students to disenfranchisement, and the narrative explaining why one should care about one’s union is a compelling one. But in the short period around elections the resources available may not be sufficient to effectively work on this group, however the application of this idea throughout the year by the growing marketing department should be seen as a long-term strategy to build and broaden the voting base.

In looking for other tools for success, it is necessary to do some analysis of the successes of other unions, the closest simile to ‘other player analysis’ available since the product democracy exists as a monopoly, there are evidently some successful processes to strengthen the goods and services on offer.

Imperial college union has decided largely, but not completely, to reject a blanket approach to marketing and has sought to motivate its target market of involved students into voting in higher numbers through the use of an incentive. A more sophisticated voting system allows for a system where the voter is given fifty pence to give to any sports club or society within the union. This simple and cheap process instantly strengthens nearly all parts of the marketing mix.

Component	Change
Philosophy	Re-emphasises student ownership
Price	The small time cost is rewarded with a nominal fifty pence
Promotion	Creates a large number of coalition partners as the many clubs and societies actively encourage their members to vote in high numbers since they see the chance to get more money for their activities
People	The person now approaching a potential voter is more likely to be known to the voter since it will now more often be a club teammate or society president, rather than a stranger.
Physical evidence	Direct financial transaction involved in voting so the answer to the question ‘Why vote’ has a more succinct answer
Processes	Requires better election software, but allows more demographic information about voters to be gleaned

With this simple addition, making a better product composition and a more balanced marketing mix, when marketed to a clearly identified target market, produces great results. ICU reports total turnout of 18%, which represents more than 60% of their involved students.

Impact on fundraising

Currently KCLSU has an operating budget of £4.5 million, with £2.5million coming from a block grant from King’s College and the rest generated through commercial services. The fact that the Education Act makes the running of a student union or association a statutory obligation would suggest that a student union can demand money from it’s parent institution, however this premise has never been tested in the courts. Clearly a strong and vibrant union can make a better claim for funding on behalf of it’s members if more of it’s members are seen to be involved in the request, something best evidenced by the mandate provided by high election turnout. It would seem to be self-evident that should an issue arrive which brings out the vote in elections to 50% or so, the mandate given to the elected Sabbaticals would be huge and it would be hard for any university to defy half the student body, but outside this extreme case, could a better marketed democracy impact upon fundraising?

There is no link between KCLSU’s block grant and voter turnout, and the risks involved in the establishment of such are not something the Trustees would ever condone. However in less tangible ways, the successful marketing of democracy at KCLSU could have an impact on fundraising since increasing voter turnout strengthens the brand of KCLSU as a whole, allowing for a better negotiating position. But since KCLSU’s funding is agreed in the long term and comes from a single source, there is not much that the marketing of democracy can do directly to affect this either positively or negatively.

Should the fundraising framework change though, it will certainly be advantageous in attracting new sources of funding to be able to boast of an active and engaged polity who have a genuine interest in their union, and who have a strong relationship with it, a relationship that might be worth something to a third party. Whether KCLSU would ever risk that trust remains to be seen, but with a well-marketed democracy feeding the heart of the union, the rest of the union will find it easier to attract the grant-makers eye.