- Neal Mendelsohn

The high cost of tuition is part of why that four-year degree now takes, on average, nearly six years to earn. It's also much of why online and vocational colleges are booming these days, with some two-year schools now predicting a 10% enrollment spike over last year alone. It follows that nontraditional colleges have been doing lots of marketing. But is selling an education the same as selling shampoo? When dreams of a better life are at stake, does the marketer bear a greater ethical burden? Such are a few of the questions raised by Neal Mendelsohn, who runs agency Fourth Wall in Los Angeles. Mendelsohn took a look at the new campaign for Westwood College for us. As he writes, these spots show Gen Y viewers just what they want to see. But that might just be the trouble.


Online and nontraditional college degree programs are fast becoming the health clubs of the information age, but I don't mean that in a positive, six-pack-abs-of-the-mind kind of way. Do a little digging and you'll discover that many of these business colleges have an extraordinarily high dropout rate. In some cases, nearly half of all students at the undergraduate level drop out after they realize that higher education requires more money, more time and more effort than they were led to expect.

And that's where the problems begin for me with Westwood College's new campaign, a triad of TV spots currently airing in selected markets encompassing the school's 20 outposts in six states. Rather than portraying the hard work—and therefore inherent value—that goes into higher education, Westwood makes getting your degree look about as tough as downloading a song on iTunes. But what truly pisses me off is having to accept that this campaign may indeed be successful at getting millennials to sign up for classes. Why? Because they'll probably end up dropping them. According to the Online Education Database, Westwood College's 2006 graduation rate stood at 52%.

"Changing Backgrounds," the campaign created by Cactus, a Denver-based boutique-advertising agency, is breezy and funny: Slap a hip-hop soundtrack on this story-based ad and you get a reprise of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. The story line takes an engagingly annoying young man and bounces him through a series of dead-end jobs (he's a party clown and, yes, a burger-flipper too) until one day he sees an ad for Westwood. Drawn in by the advertised ease, professionalism and flexibility of the program, he snares his B.A. in just three years, scoring a solid job and great salary. Just like that—Poof!—he's gone from a red rubber nose and a dirty apron to a trendy loft office and a fabulous career. Probably as a creative director.

To be fair to this hard-working independent agency, Cactus made optimal use of a limited budget by using a single actor and concept, then shooting multiple endings. They also crafted some catchy banner ads with headlines like "Go from making a living to making a life." What's more, the creative execution of these spots is a vast improvement over past Westwood TV spots. You can watch those on YouTube. They'll make your eyes bleed.

Now, no one disagrees that education makes your life better. But when this school hired its agency, shouldn't the real question have been: What makes Westwood better equipped to make you better equipped? How's this school different from, say, University of Phoenix? Would you be proud of a Westwood degree? Answer: silence. They're hiding behind the consumer benefit; there's no differentiation or higher purpose to any of it.

I'm left with the unfortunate impression that Westwood College is so eager to have every 19-year-old slacker's money that it's willing to lead them into believing that getting an education is as easy and fun as playing a videogame. Well, if it were so easy, everybody would do it. That's why higher education is so valuable, kids. You have to earn it. Which is irrelevant if success is measured by registrations and not graduations.

The old days of education marketing are dead, dead, dead. Which is fine by me. (I may have hastened the demise with the work we did for California State University at Northridge.) Nobody needs to see yet another ad with flying mortarboard hats and diplomas waved overhead. But someone should have challenged the client to go beyond instant gratification and millennial assumptions to offer a bit of substance. Small agencies must sell big thinking and big ideas, the road not taken, or why not go with IBM?

I know that's a tough sell. I've been there. I can hear the client asking the question, "Will that put butts in seats?" Eventually, yes—and for all the right reasons.