Earnings Lost by Opting Out of STEM -- updated 6/27

Yesterday (25 June 2012), the online editions of Inside Higher Education and the The Chronicle of Higher Education posted articles that called their readers' attention to a recently published research report, "The Earnings Benefits of Majoring in STEM Fields Among High Achieving Minority Students" by Tatiana Melguizo and Gregory C. Wolniak (Research in Higher Education, Volume 53, Number 4, 2012).

I strongly urge the readers of this blog to read this important report. Skim or skip the authors' extensive descriptions of their sophisticated statistical methodologies and focus on their data, findings, and recommendations (which they call "implications"). To help get you started, I offer my own brief summary as an alternative to the reviews by Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle.

Summary of Findings

The report presents the results of the authors' efforts to answer two questions:

• How much more did high achieving minority students who were science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors earn in their first jobs after graduation than high achieving minority students who were not STEM majors?
   
• How much more did high achieving minority STEM students earn if their first jobs were directly related to STEM vs those whose jobs were not directly related to STEM?

Compared to what? Compared to a wide range of other non-STEM majors, but especially to students who were humanities and education majors, and across a wide range of non-STEM jobs.  The authors call the alignment of college majors to the skills required by jobs taken within a few years after graduation the "congruence" between  major fields  and first jobs. So they also answered a more general third question:

• For each major field of study (including STEM), how much more was earned by students who took congruent jobs than students who took jobs that were not congruent to their major field of study?

Few readers will be surprised to learn that the authors found that STEM majors enjoyed higher salaries than non-STEM majors in their first jobs; that for all majors, most students who took jobs that were congruent with their majors earned higher salaries than those who didn't; and that STEM graduates who took STEM-related jobs earned higher salaries than those who took non-STEM jobs.

But most readers will probably be surprised that the authors found such large differences in the average earnings they found in answer to each of these questions:

• STEM grads earned $48,856 per year, whereas humanities and education majors only earned $31,236 per year.
   
• Black graduates earned $35,900 per year, which is considerably less than than the $42,180 earned by Latino graduates .
   
• Black STEM graduates earned $39,365 per year, which is substantially less than the $56,875 per year earned by Latino STEM graduates.
   
• Interestingly, black education graduates earned $39,537 per year, which is considerably more than the $27,253 earned by Latino education graduates ... but well below the $48,856 earned by all STEM graduates and further below the $56,875 earned by Latino STEM graduates.

However, the reader's disappointment may be tempered by the authors' preliminary findings that earnings gaps were related to the fact that a larger percentage of black STEM students took non-congruent first jobs than Latino STEM students. Given their overall finding that congruent first jobs usually paid higher salaries than non-congruent jobs, the lower average salaries earned by black STEM students is not surprising after all ... but it raises the question: "Why did so many black STEM majors take non-STEM jobs so early in their careers?" Or to use the term favored by another researcher, "Why did so many high achieving black students 'opt out' of STEM right after they graduated?"

Who Were These High Achieving Minority Students?

The authors analyzed the records of a weighted sample of 1,067 black, Latino, and Asian Pacific Island students who had applied to the Gates Foundation's Millennium Program for scholarships in 2000. Some were accepted into the program; others weren't; but both groups had grades, SAT scores, and other characteristics that marked them as high achievers. In addition to STEM, the students also majored in the social sciences, humanities, education, and professional fields.

Other Studies

Three other recent studies are related to this one:

• "What Happens After Enrollment? An Analysis of the Time Path of Racial Differences in GPA and Major Choice" by Peter Arcidiaconoy, Esteban M. Aucejoz, and Ken Spennerx. Duke University Website, June 2, 2011.
   
• Opting Out, Losing the Potential of America's Young Black Elite by Maya A. Beasley. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
   
• "Why they leave: the impact of stereotype threat on the attrition of women and minorities from science, math and engineering majors" by Maya A. Beasley and Mary J. Fischer

Whereas "Earnings Benefits" addressed the decisions of high achieving black students to change from STEM to non-STEM fields after they graduated, these other studies considered the decisions by high achieving black students to change majors from STEM to non-STEM before they graduated:

"After Enrollment" found that changing majors raised the GPAs of the black students; whereas Opting Out focused on why the black students switched to non-STEM majors. Taken together, these three studies indicate that opting out of STEM either before or after graduation is a substantial phenomenon that needs to be reversed as soon as possible.

• The authors of "After Enrollment" are perplexed by the decisions of so many black students to accept lower paying job offers, so they suggest that follow-up qualitative studies be done to explore why the students made such financially incorrect career choices.
   
• The authors of "After Enrollment" imply that the black students switched out of STEM in order to improve their GPAs ... which is a rational decision in the short run, but as shown by "After Enrollment", it undermines the students' subsequent earnings potentials.
   
• The author of Opting Out conducted the kind of qualitative study advocated by the authors of "Earnings Benefits." She found that black students switched majors in large part because of their perception of racism in STEM fields where there are still relatively few blacks. Faced with this "stereotype threat" -- the anxiety caused by the expectation of being judged based on a negative group stereotype -- many black students dropped out STEM majors and changed to "racialized" fields, her term for fields wherein there are already a substantial number of black professionals and therefore substantially less racism.
   
• The author of Opting Out also co-authored "Why They Leave" -- a statistical analysis of the the impact of stereotype threat on the decisions of women and minority students to drop out of STEM majors based on the responses of nearly 4,000 students to the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF).
   
• As noted earlier, the "Earnings Benefits" study found that black education graduates earned considerably more than Latino education graduates. This would be consistent with the possibility that some well-prepared black students opted out of STEM in favor of education, a racialized field, or chose education as their major without considering STEM.

As with the previous notes on this subject that I have posted on this blog, full disclosure once again requires that I acknowledge that I am the very proud Daddy of Dr. Maya A. Beasley, the author of Opting Out and co-author of "Why They Leave." And, as before, I also voice my profound frustration with her findings. 

Yes, racism still exists and it may still exist fifty or even one hundred years from now, but so what? Why is it that highly gifted black athletes in the  NBA, NFL, and MLB had the guts to persevere in the face of the crudest racism to become superstars in the world's most highly competitive sports, whereas highly gifted black STEM scholars don't have the courage to win Nobel Prizes? 

We cheered Jack Johnson and Jesse Owens and Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson and Arther Ash and Tiger Woods. Is it possible that when we en-couraged their courage, it strengthened their resolve to persevere?. If so, then why are we now saying "There, there, poor baby. Did that mean white Dr. STEM-y hurt your feelings when he looked at you funny and muttered the N-word?"

Why aren't we en-couraging our young black scholars to be more courageous? Why aren't we celebrating their victories and strengthening their resolve to persevere in the presence of racism? As Dr. DuBois correctly observed, a people's progress is driven by the achievements of its best and brightest, its "Talented Tenth." 

The authors of "Earnings Benefits" have made an important contribution by putting dollar figures on the benefits gained or lost by the decisions of our  Talented Tenth to opt in or to opt out of STEM, benefits or losses that will be compounded by the proportional pay raises they receive or don't receive in subsequent decades.

_____________________

Related notes:

•  Fight or Flight (revised)
•  Affirmative Action Strategies -- 1
•  Washington, Du Bois, and Silicon Valley
•  Moses, Joshua, and Instagram

UVa, Strategic Dynamism, and What Corporate Management Can Teach Academia ... updated 6/19/12

"Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a
great university.  Sustained change with buy-in does work."

This quotation is from a public statement by Dr. Theresa A. Sullivan, former president, University of Virginia, that was linked to an article published by the Chronicle of Higher Education (6/19/12). An article in  last Friday's Chronicle (6/15/12) suggested that the recent and as yet unexplained firing of Dr. Sullivan reflected the influence of a powerful alumnus, a venture capitalist, who proposed that UVa needed leadership that embodied "strategic dynamism" -- whatever that is.

This struck me as yet another example of corporate intellectual imperialism, the belief, correction, the fundamentalist faith that corporate America has what it takes to cure whatever ails the rest of America, in this case, a prominent institution in its academic sector.  So let me begin by addressing the question implied by the last item in the title of this response. What can corporate management teach academia? My answer ==> not much.

Now isn't that a shocker? A man who has spent most of his adult life in universities as a student, as a tenured faculty member, and as a member of an academic senior staff declares that corporate managers don't have much to offer faculty and academic administrators who seek to improve the functioning of their colleges and universities. Yup. I'm just another pointy-headed, closed minded academic who refuses to worship in the High Church of Corporate Management, MBA.  Or am I? In my defense, I offer the following fable.

A Mostly Corporate Fable
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a businessman faced a vexing problem. Try hard as he might, he made no headway. When he was just about to give up, he had a flash. Why not ask Professor Know-Something to give him a hand? Know-Something had been one of the most interesting teachers the businessman had had in college because the professor really enjoyed solving problems.

So he called his old teacher, described his problem, and was disappointed when Professor Know-Something honestly declared that he had never considered such a problem before, but would give it some thought. A few days later the professor stopped by the businessman's office on his way home and gave him some creative suggestions as to how the problem could be solved. The businessman immediately realized that the professor's ideas not only solved the problem; they would enable him to increase his profits by 10 percent right away. So he insisted on paying the professor one percent of his anticipated gains. The professor was delighted. Indeed, he was so pleased with his windfall that he offered to help his former student whenever possible in the future. Moreover, the professor was able to develop a rigorous formulation of his solution to the business problem in the form of a paper that he submitted to a refereed journal, a paper that was promptly accepted for publication.

From time to time thereafter, the professor would call the businessman to inquire if he needed more help. Sometimes he did, but not often enough to absorb most of the professor's creative energies ...  and the professor's thirst for extra income to supplement his meager academic salary. So the professor began to approach other businesses, especially those owned or managed by his former students, asking them if they needed help. Many of them did, and each of them paid the professor what he considered to be a generous consultant fee.

From time to time the professor also called a few of his students who had become government administrators. Yes, they also needed help; but since government agencies couldn't pay the professor nearly as much as private corporations, the professor spent most of his time with his corporate clients.

And once in a great while, the professor would approach a university administrator and invariably get the same response. "Yes, indeedy, we could really use your help, but unfortunately we don't have any money so we can't pay you."  Needless to say, the professor didn't do much academic consulting.

At the end of each year Professor Know-Someting found that his consulting fees had the same distribution: 90 percent from corporate clients, 10 percent from government clients, and nothing from his few pro-bono academic clients. And his records showed that he allocated his consulting time and creative energies in a similar manner: 90 percent for corporate clients, 9 percent for government clients, and 1 percent for his pro-bono academics.

What's more interesting is that other professors heard about Professor Know-Something's prosperous consulting activities and began to do some consulting themselves. And at the end of each year these other professors also found that their income and man-hours had  similar distributions. Their corporate clients dominated their practices, although they did earn significant income from government agencies. And, of course, none of them spent very much time working on academic problems.

As the professors published more and more descriptions of their clever problem solving methods, they realized that they had amassed a considerable body of knowledge, especially with regards to business problems. Being professors, they created graduate degree programs through which they could teach bright students their creative approaches to business problems. They called these programs Masters of Business Administration, or MBAs. The well trained graduates of MBA programs quickly became the rising stars in whatever businesses they entered. And of course they always called their old professors for help whenever they encountered problems they couldn't solve using the techniques they had learned in their MBA courses. In other words, the virtuous cycle continued with better trained MBAs asking for help on more complex problems which the professors solved, published in journals, and incorporated into their courses.

The End.

Moral of the Fable
So what's the moral of this little fable? Very simple. Corporate managers know how to solve business problems because smart academics like me taught them what they know. Government managers aren't as clever because smart academics didn't spend as much time on government problems because government fees were substantially lower than corporate fees. And nobody knows very much about how to solve academic problems because smart academics seldom work for free ... :-)

So whenever I read that the University of XYZ has hired a president or a provost to apply "proven" corporate management techniques to the university's problems, I usually chuckle, become annoyed, or sadly shake my head. We academics fathered corporate management as it is now practiced, so what can we learn from our robust intellectual offspring? Not much. More importantly, we didn't develop those ideas to solve academic problems nor did we ever verify their applicability to academic problems; so no one should assume that they will work in an academic environment. As for why so many universities seem determined to apply these untested notions, we need only look at their Boards of Trustees whose memberships are increasingly dominated by MBAs ... :-)

Modern Trends of online education for the youth

If you want to make a healthy career and personality, it is only through education that you can maintain it. Education is the essence of life and one need to avail it with the given constraints. With the rapid growth of technology, now you can avail your studies with great ease. With the fast improvement of technology and the rapid progress of internet, now you can pursue your studies while staying indoors and without surrendering your social responsibilities. You need not give up your present job as well, as education has come to your doorsteps via the distance learning mechanism.

During my post graduation, I was pretty tensed as to how to continue studies since I was doing a job. For my promotion in the job, I needed to pursue management studies. Therefore, I opted for online education and finished my post graduation availing such mode of learning. I pursued my management studies and finished MBA in finance from a UK university. Now let me tell you the benefits that I’ve achieved while pursuing my studies.  

How was I benefitted from online education?

While I was pursuing my management studies I achieved so many advantages. At first my mode of learning was very flexible. Distance learning or online education is very flexible. One can pursue his studies from anywhere and at any time. I was doing a job and after getting back from my office, I used to study. I could study anytime I felt like and studied while relaxing in my room. The most important thing is that you need not go to any campus for your studies.

Another advantage I could achieve is the low admission fees. Unlike traditional learning method, online learning is very economical. I could finish my studies by depositing very less fees and thus it was not at all a burden to me.

Distance learning is also very interactive. Here, the students can enjoy and maintain a healthy relation with their teachers. I used to interact with my teachers and clear my doubts using message boards and chats. It is just by switching your computer that you can pursue your studies. With the aid of audio-visual technology, I finally finished my management studies.

One important thing is that online learning can be more interesting if any online university holds a general meeting between the teachers or students across the world or if the university arranges an educational excursion to a significant place. 

HBCU Websites -- Some Best Practices

Part I -- It's a Web World

A consensus has recently emerged within the HBCU community that lack of public awareness of the recent achievements of HBCUs makes them vulnerable to judgments that they have nothing more to contribute to U.S. society, that HBCUs have a distinguished legacy, but a dubious future. HBCUs need to tell their stories more effectively so that the general public can better understand why they are still needed. I agree with this consensus.

However, I disagree with most of the specific suggestions I have encountered as to what HBCUs should do to remedy this situation because most suggestions haven't focused on the most important tool for managing the public's perceptions of what HBCUs are all about ==> their Websites.

To rephrase the emerging consensus, some HBCUs have used their Websites to tell their stories very effectively; but most haven't. Even a cursory examination of the 105 HBCU Websites provides ample evidence that most HBCUs don't seem to understand that their Websites are their primary opportunities for informing prospective students, alumni, and potential sponsors of their R&D projects about their most important strengths and recent achievements.

In today's world, institutions are defined by what people see and hear on their Websites. If HBCUs don't tell their stories well on their Websites, it doesn't matter how well they present themselves in other media because today's world is a Web world, a world wherein all other media are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Anyone who doubts this assertion need only consider the fact that the other media -- newspapers, magazines, radio, network TV, and cable TV -- are losing readers, listeners, and viewers while for more and more people the Web has become their primary source of information about everything.

HBCU Websites as News Media

But the good news is that the Web also provides every institution, including HBCUs, with an inexpensive medium through which they can tell their stories directly to everyone else on the planet in their own words, unfiltered by reporters and editors, and at the times best suited to yield the biggest advantages.

As the manager of the Digital Learning Lab (DLL), I have visited each of the 105 HBCU Websites every week since 2003 in search of announcements about their academic achievements or upcoming academic events, i.e., announcements and events related to their teaching & learning, their research, and their community service. I then post links to these announcements on the DLL's "Gateway to HBCUs" Web portal and also add them to the DLL's searchable database.

The following notes summarize my personal observations about the features of HBCU Websites that have assisted or impeded my search for their academic news, observations that I will categorize as the Do's and Don'ts that are most likely to assist or impede prospective students, alums, potential sponsors of R&D projects, and other visitors in their search for information about a much broader range of information that includes academic issues, but also includes news about campus life, sports, fraternity activities, band competitions, theater productions, rivalries with other HBCUs, Home Comings; assistantships, fellowships, and internship opportunities for current students; career opportunities for graduates; alumni achievements; etc, etc, etc.

An Illustrative Example

But allow me to pause for a moment to cite an example from the last presidential election that illustrates my point that HBCUs must not only continue to do good stuff; nowadays they must also provide good descriptions of their good stuff on their Websites.

As most readers will probably recall, the 2008 campaign for the nomination of the Democratic Party began with a series of nationally televised debates among the Party's candidates that started in 2007. The first debate was held on April 26, 2007 at South Carolina State University, an HBCU; and the third debate, moderated by political commentator Tavis Smiley, was held at another HBCU. That two of the first three debates among the Democratic Party's candidates were held at HBCUs were not only major achievements for the HBCUs that hosted the debates;  their locations set the stage for an historic turnout of support from the entire HBCU community that greatly contributed to Senator Barack Obama's historic election in November 2008 as the nation's first African American president.

Now let's get down to the Web stuff. Searching the DLL's HBCU archive database on South Carolina State University in 2007 for "Democratic Party debate" returned three headline links and excerpts from the full articles that South Carolina State posted on its Website:

• "First Democratic Presidential Primary Debate to be broadcast from SC State, April 26
  The Democratic Presidential Candidates’ Debate will be broadcast live from SC State’s Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium on Thursday, April 26, at 7 p.m., and will be produced by NBC News. This will be the first Presidential Primary debate broadcast from a Historically Black College or University." (1/8/2007) ... Initial announcement
   
•  "All systems are go! All candidates confirmed for 2008 Presidential Debate
  With less than two weeks before South Carolina makes history with the first presidential debate for either party in the 2008 cycle, officials from the South Carolina Democratic Party and South Carolina State University announced today that all systems are ready and on track for a both a successful and a historic Path to the Presidency Debate on SC State’s campus on Thursday, April 26, 2007." (4/13/2007) ... Timely reminder
   
• "600 media, 1,279 stories boost image of SC State
  Now, the debate’s success can be told in numbers. There were 1,279 stories told about the university and the debate. The total audience for programs mentioning SC State and the debate from April 16 until May 7 was 119,526,115, according to Nielsen Media Research figures. Had S.C. State purchased all of the advertising it received, it would have cost $1,331,716. The total publicity value of hosting the debate was $4 million."  (5/9/2012) ... Announcing the benefits

The third announcement is the key. While the major media alerted the nation and the world that the first debate was held at SC State, the post-debate Nielson figures were not featured in subsequent reports by the major newspapers or TV networks. Publicizing the good news embodied in that important data to the justifiably proud members of SC State community -- its students, faculty, staff, and alums -- and then to other interested readers, like you and I, at a later data was something that SC State's Website was uniquely qualified to do ... and it rose to the challenge ... Well done, SC DOGGS! Well done!!! ... :-)

Framework

Let's start by sketching a general framework for the specific do's and don'ts for HBCU administrators and Webmasters that will be presented in subsequent sections:

• Objectives ... The basic idea is to post enough new stories on your Website about your HBCU's achievements and upcoming events on a week-to-week, month-to-month basis to attract new visitors and to convert old visitors into "subscribers" who come back to your Website again and again the way readers and viewers used to read their morning newspapers and watch the evening news on TV.
   
• Drive new visitors to your Website by engaging the support of new Internet media that focus on issues of concern to the HBCU community. Think of them as tech-savvy partners who can marshal an array of Web-related technologies -- Websites, blogs, twitter feeds, YouTube channels, Facebook pages, etc -- to reach far larger audiences than you can. Their success is based on their capacity to relay reports of your success; so when you win, they win ... and vice versa. Ironically, many of these private cyber-operations were developed by far-sighted, young entrepreneurs who recognized the potential value of Internet technologies for the HBCU community long before the HBCUs themselves.
   
• Make it easy for visitors to find the news on your Website.  Place headlines and short blurbs for your most important stories on your Home Page with links to the full stories on separate pages with unique URLs.
   
• Write clearly. Your announcements and your descriptions of forthcoming events should be easy to read  ... so include photos and video clips where possible ... and in those rare instances wherein numbers are key features of your announcements, also include eye-catching charts and graphs.
   
• Check your visitor stats regularly, e.g. use Google Analytics (it's free) every day/week/month to see how well you're doing ... or not.

Part II -- Some Do's
The section recommends a few of the "best practices" that are followed by some of the best known HBCUs. Indeed, one of the reasons their brands retain their prominence in the public's awareness is their adherence to these practices. Most of the recommendations can be implemented with a minimal increase in the work loads of the staff currently responsible for an HBCU's Website and overall communications. Note: Some of the following bullets include links in italics to HBCU Web pages that illustrate their points.

1. Think of Your Website as Your HBCU's Most Important News Medium

• Publish news items of interest to all of your stakeholders -- students and their families, prospective students and their families, faculty, staff, senior administrators, alumni, trustees, donors, funding agencies ...
   
• Emphasize your HBCU's academic achievements, i.e., teaching & learning, research, and community service. Note all contracts & grants, publications, awards, and honors awarded to students, faculty, and alumni; guest lectures by distinguished experts; commencement speakers; conferences and workshops hosted by your HBCU ...
   
• Highlight your HBCU's community service activities.  
  -- Meals for poor people at Thanksgiving ... St. Augustine's College, University of Maryland Eastern Shore
  -- Toys for children at Christmas ... Claflin University
  -- Free tax preparation services ... Harris-Stowe State University, Jackson State University, Coppin State University
  -- Alternative Spring Breaks ... Bowie State University, Howard University ...
   
• Provide complete coverage of the most popular non-academic activities sponsored by your HBCU with lots of photos and video clips of the newsmakers, e.g., sports and other competitive activities, campus life, band performances, theater productions, poetry readings, concerts ...
   
• Feature occasional reports that quantify the economic impact of your HBCU on its local community.
  ... Tennessee State University, Alabama State University, Savannah State University, Fort Valley State University, Southern University of New Orleans  ...
   
• Cover events of general interest to the HBCU community.
  ... Trayvon Martin Demonstrations/Rallies ... University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Alabama State University, Harris-Stowe University, Grambling State University, Tougaloo College, Clark Atlanta University ...
   
• Use your Website to present your HBCU's definitive policy statements in times of crisis.  
  -- Hurricanes ... Howard University, FAMU, Clark Atlanta University ...
  -- Great Recession ... Virginia State University video, Spelman College video, Morehouse College ...

2. Drive New Visitors to Your Website

We're talking about raising the visibility of your brand in the academic marketplace, so this is really about advertising; which means that we're talking about ads on the Web, today's most powerful communications medium. The goal is to get the most favorable references to your HBCU in front of the most Web users for the least cost to your HBCU. Two approaches to this challenge come to mind:

• Pay for search engine ads via Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. with your HBCU's funds
• Engage partners who will cover the advertising costs
  

Make no mistake: the most successful for-profit institutions -- like Phoenix, DeVry, Strayer, and Kaplan -- pay millions of dollars each month for search engine ads for their certificate and degree programs because their expensive Web-based advertising works. It generates lots of student inquiries that yield high enrollments that yield high tuition revenues that yield high profits. But you know this. So let's talk about the second option.

(a) Use Social Media to Mobilize Your Home Base

Start with your own HBCU. Don't assume that the members of your own community read your press releases and other news notices just because you post them on your Website. This is a particularly dubious assumption for your current students and youngest alums. You're more likely to get their attention through social media, e.g., Facebook and Twitter.

• Establish a Facebook identify for your HBCU and place a Facebook logo in at the bottom of your Home Page that links to your Facebook page ... Note the Facebook "f" logo/links on the following HBCU Home Pages: Claflin University, FAMU, Howard University, Jackson State University, Spelman College, Tuskegee University
   
• Establish a Twitter account for your HBCU and place a Twitter logo at the bottom of your Home Page next to your Facebook logo that links to your Twitter page .. Note the Twitter bird logo/links on the following HBCU Home Pages: Claflin University, FAMU, Howard University, Jackson State University, Spelman College, Tuskegee University
   
• Send out mass emails a few times to all faculty, staff, students, and alums imploring them to "Like" your HBCU on Facebook and to "Follow" your HBCU on Twitter.
   
• Whenever you publish a press release or an important news notice on your Website, post a message that provides a headline and summary for the news on your Facebook page that includes a link to the full description of the news on your Website.
   
• Tweet your news announcements with a brief (max 140 character) headline that included a link to the full news item on your Website
  
  -- Hampton University tweet  = "HU Community Mourns the Loss of Devoted Honors College Director Dr. Freddye T. Davy http://www.hamptonu.edu/news/060412_76_davy.html" ... clicking the link leads to the full announcement on Press Release page
  
  -- North Carolina A&T tweet = "Take a look at this week's Alumni Times! http://bit.ly/L3iuG3 #NCAT" ... clicking the encoded link leads to the online magazine "Alumni Times" on A&T's Website
  
  -- Spelman College tweet = "Beverly Daniel Tatum ‏@BDTSpelman
  New revamped Spelman website unveiled tonight. Check it out http://www.spelman.edu Retweeted by Spelman College"... This tweet is a  neat bank shot. President Tatum sent a tweet from her BDTSpelman Twitter account that encouraged those who followed her to look at Spelman's newly reorganized Website found at http://www.spelman.edu ... The official Spelman College Twitter account follows Dr. Tatum's BDTSpelman account, so it received her tweet. It then retweeted (rebroadcast) her tweet to all of its followers.
  
  -- Morehouse College tweet = "The @Morehouse Class of 2012... facebook.com/photo.php?fbid... "  Clicking the encoded link leads to a large photo on the Morehouse Facebook page of the graduates in procession. Below the photo find happy comments of the grads, families, and friends.
   
• Indeed, an HBCU's Facebook page makes a great supplement for an HBCU's Website because of Facebook's capacity to share photos, videos, and online conversations in which members of the HBCU community can exchange comments about the HBCU's announcements.
  
  At this time Facebook has two additional advantages with regards to communicating with students and younger alums ==> (a) they "all" use Facebook; and (b) they "all" know how to publish materials on Facebook. Indeed a far higher percentage of students know how to publish materials on Facebook than on Websites; so there are more potential student assistants who could be hired to help an HBCU publish more concise versions of its announcements on Facebook than on the HBCU's Website. Some HBCUs now publish a large share of their announcements on their Facebook pages. This is especially convenient for announcements about local news that is more likely to be of interest to the students, faculty, staff, and alums within the HBCU, rather than news that would be shared with the community of all HBCUs or with the wider world beyond HBCUs. In such cases, their tweets contain links to the full news announcements on Facebook, rather than to the archives on their Websites.
  
  -- Elizabeth City State University ... Twitter ==> Facebook
  -- Howard University ... Twitter ==> Facebook
  -- Florida A&M University ... Twitter ==> Facebook
  -- Spelman College ... Twitter ==> Facebook
   

(b) Understand How HBCU Service Providers Support the HBCU Community

As previously noted, entrepreneurs have established Web-based, for-profit companies and non-profit organizations that provide information, social networking, memorabilia, and other services for the ultimate consumers within the HBCU community -- students, staff, faculty, alums, former students who never graduated ... and their families and close friends.

• There are about 300,000 students currently enrolled in the 105 HBCUs, so I would conservatively estimate that the HBCU market represents between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 core consumers.
   
• These core consumers are also well positioned to influence the institutional purchases made by their HBCUs for computers, networks, enterprise applications, textbooks,  cable TV services, food services, travel services, conference services, etc, etc, etc.
   
• Beyond this, successful providers have attracted the attention of the staffs of foundations, government agencies, educational media, major media, and other potential supporters.

Here's a short list of HBCU providers. Note: Appearance on this list is not an endorsement; nor does omission reflect a derogatory judgment:

• HBCU Buzz Inc
• HBCU Connect
• HBCU Career Center
• HBCU Digest

Some other providers of online information services address the broader market of black American consumers; but they also focus on HBCU issues from time to time

• Black America Web
• Diverse Issues in Higher Education 
• Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE)
  
• Huffington Post Black Voices
  

Many of your own students, faculty, staff, and alums already subscribe to the services offered by HBCU providers because they are not only interested in what's happening at their own HBCU; they also want to keep up with what's happening at other HBCUs and to stay in touch with friends and colleagues at other HBCUs.

They don't want to look at all 105 HBCU Websites every week. They want to obtain the news they are interested in -- e.g., sports, campus life, entertainment, academics -- via convenient access to the Web pages, blogs, tweets, and Facebooks of a couple of sources; and they want to be able to interact with members of other HBCU communities without having to look up names, email addresses, and other contact info by going to the 104 other HBCU Websites. Indeed, providing  convenient access to the entire HBCU community is such a fundamental function that some providers include words like "connect" and "digest" in their names ... :-)

(c) Use Social Media to Engage HBCU Service Providers as De Facto Partners
HBCU service providers are the new Black Press. They aggregate and distill the success stories of the 105 HBCUs for their subscribers. More stories attract more subscribers; more subscribers enable the profit-oriented providers to generate more profit from the Web ads of their corporate sponsors; and more subscribers attract more support from the sponsors of the non-profit providers. In other words, your success as an HBCU enhances their success.

But the partnership works both ways. The providers' capacity to reach more subscribers enhances their capacity to raise the visibility of your HBCU and thereby increases the public's understanding of what your HBCU is doing nowadays and why it's still needed.

The following bullets suggest a few basic techniques to get you started using Facebook and Twitter to draw the attention of HBCU providers to the announcements and events posted on your HBCU's Website. You can find more advanced techniques in the Facebook/Twitter online "help" sections and/or by using  Google, Bing, or Yahoo to search for more extensive "how to" manuals written by third parties.

• Configure your HBCU Twitter and Facebook accounts to follow/"Like" HBCU providers on Facebook and Twitter.
   
• Use Facebook and Twitter to send messages that encourage more members of your HBCU community to sign up for the providers' services on their Websites and to follow the providers on Facebook and Twitter
   
• Retweet the tweets and share the posts of the providers that are most relevant to your HBCU and/or to the HBCUs that the members of your HBCU community relate to most strongly.
   
• HBCU providers follow all HBCUs that have twitter accounts and Facebook pages.  But if your accounts are new, then @mention the providers in your first few tweets to alert them that you're online.
   
• Use #hashtags in your tweets to identify the categories of your press releases and other announcements; for example #HBCU or #HBCUs or #HBCUgrant or #HBCUsports

3. Provide News That's Easy to Find, Easy to Read

The "best practices" noted in this section are obvious and widely applied; so the only question is why all HBCUs have not adopted them yet; but unfortunately, they haven't.

• News Facts vs. Forthcoming Events
  It's useful to distinguish between announcements that present important news facts (for example, your HBCU's receipt of a large donation or a major grant) versus announcements of forthcoming events (for example, Homecoming, conferences, commencements, and guest lectures.)
  
  -- Alabama A&M University ... "AAMU Spotlight" vs. "Upcoming Events"
  -- Claflin University ... "Claflin News" vs. "Upcoming Events"
  -- Florida A&M University ... "News" vs. "Events"
  
  News facts should be presented asap, or at least before the most important information reaches your target audience via other media. Forthcoming events should be announced far enough in advance for your target audience to make plans to participate. Reminders of the events a few days before their occurrence are a good idea.
  
  Summaries of what happened at an event as news facts should also be published after the event for the benefit of the members of your target audience who were unable to attend
  
  -- South Carolina State University ... Impact of hosting Democratic debates in 2008
  -- Hampton University ... Summary + video of Mayor Cory Booker's 2012 Commencement address
   
• Headlines, optional blurbs, and full text
  Headlines for a few of your HBCU's most important recent announcements in all categories should appear in prominent locations on your Website's Home Page, followed by an optional blurb that provides the reader with a brief description of the announcement. The headline should be linked to the full story on another page (or in set of paragraphs on another page).
   
• News Archives
  The reader should be given access to old news via a list of all headlines (and blurbs) grouped by month and year on a page called "Archives" or "Old News" or some other name that has similar meaning. If your archives cover more than one year, it's best to provide a drop-down list from which the reader can select a year. Each year should be a link to a page that contains all of the headlines (and blurbs) that your HBCU published that year. As on the Home Page, when the reader clicks a headline, the full text of the news announcement should appear.
  
  -- Hampton University ... Drop down links to archive list at top of every full story
  -- Howard University ... Links to archive list at top of Press Release page
   
• Headlines, Blurbs, and Social Media
  All headlines should be tweeted at least once and each tweet should contain a link to the full text of the news announcements on your Website ... or for HBCUs that publish announcements on Facebook, the link should point to the full text on your Facebook page. 
   
• Change Your Headlines (and blurbs) "frequently"
  If the headlines (and blurbs) on your Website's Home Page (or on its Facebook page) don't change from time to time, visitors will get the worst impression about your HBCU -- that little or nothing is happening there, that it's becoming irrelevant. But how often you change your headlines (and blurbs) will depend on how much news really occurs.
  
  Large HBCUs have more faculty, staff, and students so they have more opportunities to do "interesting" things every week; whereas small HBCUs have less opportunities so their news headlines (and blurbs) might only change every two weeks, or once per month. But no matter how small your HBCU, it's always doing something interesting.
   
• Good Writing
  Your headlines should be eye-catching; they should stimulate visitors to your Website to want to read the full stories. And your stories should be well written; to be specific, they should follow the hallowed format inherited from printed news media. The first paragraphs should present the essence of the story for all readers; whereas later paragraphs should present more details for readers who become engrossed in the story.
   
• Search Engines
  Install a search engine on your Website whose scope covers your archive pages and possibly the files that contain the full text of all of your news announcements. This will enable readers to find each and every news announcement months or years after you first publish its headline on your Home Page.
  
  If you don't include this kind of search feature, your HBCU will lose access to its history. When someone asks, "Which HBCUs have done this or that?" your HBCU may not be included in the answer. It's not enough to tell your HBCU's stories once; you have to tell them again and again and again. The easiest way to do this is to let readers who ask the same questions about your HBCU be able to find the same answers again and again and again by using your Website's search engine.
   
• Caveat ... the Limits of Facebook
  Posting announcements on Facebook is convenient, but poses significant retrieval problems. On a Website, you can use keywords to search for all announcements, no matter how old the announcements; but on Facebook, searching is highly restricted at this time. Indeed, here's a quote from  Facebook about its search function:
  
  "How can I best use [Facebook] search to get news and information? ... Currently, you can only search for content that has been posted in the last 30 days. The range of the search history may be expanded in the future."
  
  Until Facebook's search history is greatly expanded, HBCUs that use Facebook for their announcements are strongly advised to also post their most important announcements on their Websites. Otherwise, no one will be be able to search for and retrieve announcements older than 30 days ... :-(
   

4. Keeping Score

It's not enough to tell your HBCU's success stories. You also need to know how many people are reading its stories so that you can see if your efforts to increase the visibility of your HBCU's brand are succeeding or not.

(a) Web Pages

We're talking numbers now, nerd stuff, the cold-blooded, green-eye-shaded figures that tell you whether all of those sleek new graphics that you added to your Web site really made any difference, in what ways, and by how much.

• Some Useful Statistics

  Among other things you will want to know how many visitors come to your site; how many pages they visited; which pages; how long they stayed on each page; how many/what percent of your visitors were new versus how many/what percent were making return visits; where they came from -- city, state, country; which browsers they were using and (sometimes) which operating systems managed their platforms.You'll want to compile these stats on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis; and compare them to the stats for previous days, weeks,  months, and years. And you'll want to produce compact graphics that will let you quickly identify important patterns in these statistics.

   
• Analytical Packages

  There are numerous commercial (expensive) and freeware analytical packages on the market that will enable you to compile these kinds of statistics and graphics for your Website. Some are more powerful than others, but also require time to master.
  
  Google provides a tool kit called Google Analytics that is powerful, easy to learn, and free. If you decide to use any other set of tools you should compare the alternative to Google in terms of power and ease-of-learning. If the alternative is a commercial package you should be absolutely sure that its reports are sufficiently superior to Google Analytics to justify whatever they cost.

(b) Social Media

If your HBCU uses Facebook and Twitter, you should track how many people "follow" its tweets and how many people "like" its Facebook page from week to week. Ideally the number of "follows" and "likes" should be a high percentage of the total number of your HBCU's current students and recent alums because they're the members of your community who are most likely to be regular users of social media. 

• Of course, when your HBCU first launches its Twitter and Facebook pages you will have to use your Website, email, and other non-social media to encourage the members of your community to follow its new social media.
   
• As your HBCU's Twitter and Facebook pages acquire interesting content, the HBCU service providers discussed in previous sections of this report can help you enlist followers from other HBCUs and from the wider world.
   
• Unfortunately, at this time there is no reliable way for you to track how many people actually view your HBCU's Facebook pages, not even Google Analytics, as per this statement from Google:
  
  "Can Analytics track my Facebook or MySpace account?
  Currently, it is not possible to use Google Analytics to track individual profiles in Facebook or MySpace. These accounts do not allow user-defined JavaScript code. Therefore, you won't be able to install the tracking code. Because the Google Analytics code uses Javascript, if the code can not successfully execute, a visit will not be recorded and you will not retain any visitor information."

Part III -- Some Don'ts

It's usually difficult to do the right thing and and the wrong thing at the same time. So given my extensive list of "Do's" that were presented in the preceding sections of this piece, my list of "Don'ts" is correspondingly brief ... :-)

• Never Place Announcements in Word Documents

  Word documents and other files produced by Microsoft Office are able to contain macro programs. This makes them relatively easy targets for hackers who infect the files with malicious virus programs. Modern anti-malware packages can detect some, but not all macro viruses. Therefore prudent visitors to your Home Page will be reluctant to open announcements that are housed in Word files.
   
• Never Delete Your HBCU's History

  Your announcements are the rough drafts of your HBCU's history, so this "Don't" is merely the flip side of the "Do" about maintaining searchable archives for your announcements. Nowadays digital storage is so cheap that deleting old announcements can only be justified in the most dire circumstances.
  
  This also means that if you have to move an announcement file, you should configure your Web server to automatically redirect browsers that have the old URL for your announcement to the file's new location. 
 
   
• Never Waste a Home Page

  A Home Page without any headlines for announcements about what your HBCU has done recently or about forthcoming events at your HBCU is a wasted opportunity to inform your visitors that your HBCU is still engaged in important activities, that it's still needed.


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Post Script on 6/20/12 ... The good news is that Google's stats show that lots of folk have viewed this note; but the bad news is that only a few people have left any comments so far.

I've received direct feedback from friends and colleagues, mostly approving, but also mostly preferring a different balance. Some thought that some of the best practices I included were "too obvious" to have been listed; whereas others felt that important innovations, e.g., use of social media, were not given sufficient emphasis. 

So now I'm making a direct appeal to the readers of this blog. What do you think of the "best practices" that I described? Should other strategies have been given more emphasis? If so, which ones? .... Please leave your comments in the form at the bottom of this note. Thanks ... :-)

____________
Related notes:

• The Most Important HBCUs ... to Google
• Why Are HBCUs Still Needed? -- Part I
• Why Are HBCUs Still Needed? -- Part II
• Why Are HBCUs Still Needed? -- Part III
• Why Are HBCUs Still Needed? -- Part IV
• The HBCU Community as a National Laboratory for U.S. Higher Education
• The Cognitive Impact of HBCUs

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