Would you spend $5 million to organize a discussion? According to media reports*, that's exactly what Lynn University in Florida spent in preparation of holding the last presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney this year.
Didn't most of us say: Lynn University? Never heard of them.
Lynn University is a 4-year non-profit university in Boca Raton, Florida with about 2,100 students. Its sticker tuition is $31,700 and with housing costs a total of $47,650. It's total average net price including housing was $33,521 last year (All figures according to U.S.Government statistics). The school has an open admissions policy, which means as long as you meet the stated requirements you will be admitted.
The university administration and the board must clearly consider it a worthwhile investment to enhance the brand image of the university. Let's look at a few facts that seem to make sense.
First let's look at whether you can actually draw attention to your school by holding a debate. Chart 1 is a Google trends analysis of the three schools that held presidential debates this year. The debates at the University of Denver and at Hofstra University had already taken place when we pulled the data from Google trends. The data sample was taken prior to the debate at Lynn University on Monday, October 22nd. The internet attention spike for Lynn University in 2010 was due to an ABC news report entitled "Britney Gengel Was Traveling With Lynn University Students to Haiti When the Earthquake Hit".
Chart 1
Source: Google Trends: October 22nd, 2012
You can see clearly that both the University of Denver and Hofstra University received a great deal of public attention as debate locations on the internet. Hofstra experienced peak internet attention in its history according to Google Trends with the debate last week. If you are interested in what happens with Lynn Universities' traffic, check back with us or register for our blog. We'll publish the data in a couple of weeks to see the total history for all three universities. You can see clearly on this chart, that internet attention for Lynn has already picked up days ahead of the debate.
So we know, you will get attention from your investment.
But will it pay off for a university? We are not all familiar with the Lynn Universities' strategic plan. But a few facts available via the NCES database point to a very smart leadership and marketing staff at Lynn University.
Chart 2
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, data for 2011-2012
You notice in the graph above that 55 % of students come from out-of-state and 16 % from outside the United States. Both percentages are very high, in particular, for a university with open enrollment, which means that it is not as competitive to enter the university. Contrast this in enrollment method to Harvard University, one of the most selective schools, which accepted only 6% of all applicants.
This presidential debate will give Lynn University brand recognition and "bragging rights" accross the country and the world. This must be a reputable and good university. How else would you react as a Chinese parent or student? The President of the United States is coming to the university and attending a high profile public discussion with his rival.
Why are we talking about Chinese parents? We have already seen that 16 % of the students come from outside the United States. If you visit the admissions site, you find under the admissions document a visible Chinese language version of the university information. It's a very effective and inexpensive way for localized marketing. (It's one of the marketing elements we recommend to our university clients.)
In our view it's a brilliant move to spend $ 5 million for the branding opportunity around the world. If you do the math, it will take less than 40 Chinese students at full tuition (x 4 years of attendance) to recoup the $ 5 million. That's what we call a successful export promotion by President Obama and Governor Romney -- and they could only do it in a bi-partisan way.
Chart 3
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* NPR report on All Things Considered,October 21, 2012
