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Demarketing of Higher Education - Thinking Out of the Box or Out of Focus?

Article  in  SSRN Electronic Journal · January 2014

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2523192

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Ayantunji Gbadamosi Nnamdi O. Madichie

University of East London Abertay University
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 Demarketing of Higher Education - Thinking out of the Box or out of Focus?

Ayantunji Gbadamosi, PhD

Senior Lecturer, Marketing, Royal Docks Business School
University of East London
Docklands Campus, London, UK, E16 2RD
Email: A.Gbadamosi@uel.ac.uk Tel: +44 208 223 2205
&
Nnamdi O. Madichie, PhD
Associate Professor of Marketing, School of Business Administration,
Canadian University of Dubai, PO Box 117781, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Visiting Research Fellow, Royal Docks Business School
University of East London
Email: nnamdi@cud.ac.ae Tel: +971 4 709 6265

Objectives The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strategies being undertaken by higher
education institutions (HEIs) to leverage their bottom-line especially in situations where public
funding has been removed and they are left with no other option but self-funding. Strategies
have ranged from internationalisation i.e. setting up overseas branch campuses; aggressive
recruitment drive for international students; and launch of new programmes to attract a wider
market i.e. by demarketing the traditional course provisions in a bid to think out-of-the-box.

Prior Work: The 2014 book entitled "Demarketing" edited by Nigel Bradley and Jim Blythe
featured an assemblage of demarketing variants - from general to selective, and ostensible to
unintentional. The new course launches like the bold attempt at the University of Missouri on
the relationship between hip hop artists opens the discourse on the future trajectory of higher
education. Are HEIs following the market demand? Demarketing traditional provisions?
Desperate for survival by reaching out to a previously disinterested audience? Should they?

Approach: This exploratory paper is a documentary analysis based with a view to kick-
starting the debate on the future of HEIs in general and using the exemplar of an
unconventional course launch – notably “English 2169: Jay-Z and Kanye West,” at the
University of Missouri, as a case illustration.

Results: The main results show that instructors have, in the past, based their syllabi on
celebrities – from Georgetown University’s sociology department offering a class on “Sociology
of Hip-Hop – Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z” in 2011, to Julius Bailey's academic textbook “The
Cultural Impact of Kanye West” forthcoming in 2014. Similarly, the University of South
Carolina offered a course on “The Sociology of Fame and Lady Gaga” in 2009, and the
department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers offered a course revolving around Jay
Z’s wife, “Politicizing Beyonce” in 2012. The University of California Berkeley students could
once take a philosophy class based on The Simpsons.

Implications: The persuasive arguments advanced by the institution, in an attempt to justify

the course launch revolves around “…likening the academic study of hip hop now to the study
of film back when movies were still seen as ‘trash for the masses,’” and the need to think out
of the box. Evidently, an attempt has been made to capture the relationship between hip hop
artists and poetry, as well as optimism enshrined in the American Dream and the attendant
“Audacity of Hope”. Meanwhile, these endeavours and the accompanying pedagogical stance
still raise some interesting questions on the extent of utility associated with such offerings.”

Value: This paper highlights a balanced view of the identity/mid-life crisis in the HE sector
resulting from public funding withdrawal, and the survival instinct of leveraging alternative
sources of income.

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