He believes technology and economic conditions also drive the increased usage of contract education programs. As technology evolves, employees need to be trained on how to use different applications. That's especially true when the economy is good, when corporations tend to pay more for training. But when it's bad, he says it's the first to get axed from the budget.
Either way, he uses all sorts of conventional and unorthodox sales and marketing vehicles. The school publishes press releases, newspaper ads, flyers, direct mail pieces, and a semi-annual catalog that feature such programs, and it is planning to mail a pro-motional piece that introduces its programs to the area's top 100 companies. Recently Washburn's leaders also instituted a flexible pricing strategy where companies can send employees to any of its public courses and receive a training discount. Companies don't always need to train 30 employees at once on the same topic but rather tend to need to train a variety of workers in a variety of skills, Underwood points out.
The school takes nothing for granted, considering contract training provides 75 percent of the continued learning division's income. Part of its value-added services include furnishing companies with a report at the end of each program-explaining what was done well, what wasn't, and how it plans on improving the program in the future.
Business-to-business marketing definitely has its advantages. Doug Lynch, vice dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, attends trade shows-giving presentations of why businesses should partner with local schools, and networks with corporate executives-every chance he gets. "Don't start lecturing them," he advises. "Just show up and listen and talk to them. In the business world, it's called solution selling." But be patient. The sales cycle can take anywhere from a few weeks to 18 months.
Back in 2001, Lynch was pursuing a corporate education contract with WorldCom. The troubled company, which was plagued by corporate scandal, narrowed down its choices to UPenn and another school. He says the other school's solution was to fly the company's executives to the school's campus, then lecture them on corporate ethics. "That's not what the company needed," Lynch says, adding that his school was awarded the eight-figure contract. "We co-constructed the curriculum with them, which was grounded in their scenario, and shared their pain. You do it with them, rather than to them, We came to them in their workplace and offered the curriculum in 10 different languages."
Contract education programs contribute 18 percent of the university's revenue. Still, Lynch says, it's not only about the money but also the opportunity to expose your faculty to real business problems and to develop cutting-edge curricula.
'It's targeted training. That's why contract ed has grown.'
-Annette Cerilli, Executive Development Center, Bryant University (R.I.)
Although contract education has been around for decades, schools still make mistakes. Lynch says they view employers as cash cows instead of partners. "They see it as a transactional nature. The second it's over, they say, 'See ya.'" The partnerships that work are those where schools establish trust, maintain ongoing dialogue and communication, and develop a relationship, not a one-time transaction, he says.
Another problem is pricing. Lynch says many IHEs don't figure out the direct costs of contract education and instead base pricing on padded or fixed university costs. For example, they may charge $1 million when they're only delivering $400,000 in services.
To help promote UPenn's programs, Lynch is currently exploring how to leverage federal training dollars that may be available to corporations. "I'm one of the early adopters of this," he says. "I don't think many schools are doing it well, and they aren't seeing the bang that they want."
Team Approach
Online institutions have a different set of promotional challenges. One of their biggest problems is procrastination, explains Chantell Cooley, vice president of partnership at Columbia Southern University, an online school based in Orange Beach, Ala. Unlike professors who can encourage or inspire students to attend and actively engage in classroom discussion, she says employees must motivate themselves to go online and complete coursework.
