The price of an undergraduate degree - recap

Some time ago I posted on the issue of setting a price for an undergraduate degree programme - BA/BSc etc: The price of an undergraduate degree - Oxford and Cambridge will charge £9,000. The BBC has now produced a table of UK institutions and prices: Bath latest to charge £9,000 fees

As you can see, almost all of those institutions are charging the maximum possible - though a couple have set a range.

The one exception is Bishop Grosseteste, Lincoln: Welcome to Bishop Grosseteste University College
This isn't a well-known place to study. When you see their fees as being lower than elsewhere - what is your emotional/instinctive reaction to them and what they might offer you? If you try and think about it objectively - have you been fair?

Here is the statement from BG on why/how they set their prices: BG Announces Tuition Fees For 2012

The statement in full. Highlighting mine:

Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln (BG) has reached a provisional decision on the tuition fees it will charge students when the new Higher Education funding system comes in from 2012. For the majority of BG's courses the annual tuition fee will be £7500, subject to Government approval. Announcing this decision the University College stressed that it would continue its efforts to ensure students could attend regardless of family income.

Announcing the proposed charge Principal Muriel Robinson said "we have decided to play this straight with students and charge them the real cost to us of providing their courses. We are not trying to send messages about our quality or how we see ourselves relative to other providers. We are setting a fair fee. Our excellent track record in relation to quality, student satisfaction and employability means we don't need to play games with the fee we set. We recognise that this is a substantial increase in fees, but people considering coming here to study should remember that they won't have to pay the tuition fees while they study - they will receive a Government loan."

The University College stressed that the decision was not yet final - like all Higher Education Institutions BG will require the approval of the Office for Fair Access for the fee it intends to charge.

Professor Robinson added "we have an excellent record in encouraging students from all backgrounds to go on to Higher Education if they have the ability. We will continue to invest in reaching out to prospective students from lower income families and supporting them if they come here to study. Our strong financial position allows us to charge a fair fee despite changes in the Government funding system."

Now what do you think about them?

Guest Post: Being a Marketer - Alan Stevenson

Michael asked me some time ago to provide a blog article in an area that you (his readers) might be interested in. A challenge I gratefully accepted and one which has taken me a bit longer than I first anticipated to deliver (sorry Mike). In part this is down to work commitments but also because I wanted to deliver an article that was reflective in nature (looking at the changes that have taken place over the last few years within my particular space).       

For over 12 years now I have been involved in both Internet technology and marketing (advising companies and public sector organisations in the best practice application of both). In all of my time in this role, what is most stimulating to me is the continuing ability of new technologies to disrupt, to change our view of what is possible and to challenge the status quo or the traditional way of doing things.

Being so close to this area I often forget just how impactful new technology has become, consider the following current examples:

- We think nothing of carrying our "music collection" around in our pockets (using an iPod or MP3 player). I grew up in the age of vinyl and then CD. A music collection for me was a very physical thing and I remember vividly those sceptics (as I explained how my new Version 2 ipod worked) telling me why they will never give up the CD. Their predecessors said the same of the vinyl. 

 

- Many of us regularly sit at a PC or smartphone to watch a must see "TV programme". Channel programming through a TV was all about the event (tune in at 9pm tonight..) but through an internet device it becomes a repository of content which can be accessed at a time that suits you. 

- Increasingly, we catch up with our friends and family anywhere in the world in 'real-time' using services like MSN, Google Chat or Skype. I remember the days of the crackly long-distance phonecall. Now I can catch up with a friend in Australia and see them "live".   

- 640 million of us now spend much of our online time catching up with our friends or family through Facebook and Facebook is for a growing number of people the access point for all of our news and the rest of the internet. We discover new information through our friends, or click a link posted on Facebook or place importance on a new product because our friends have also liked it. Facebook is already dominant, in fact it is the 3rd largest country on the world. 

- When we need to know what is happening anywhere in the world, rather than switching on the TV or going to CNN online, the BBC or Reuters, many of us get our news first on Twitter. The uprisings in North Afirca and the middle East and the most recent Tsunami in Japan are all testiment to the power of this technology to break and spread news quickly.

- When we ask the question, "is there a better way of doing this" many of us also search our mobile app marketplace to see if "there is an app for that". We may also check if there is "opensource" software (software that is created by the community for the community) that is free for us to use. All the community asks in return is that if we change it, we share it. 

I could go on. The point is that in the last few years, the traditional way of doing things has been reordered and redesigned through technology. Technology is becoming an increasing part of our everyday lives. Technology is also becoming more accessible to more of us - our PCs and smartphones are becoming cheaper and more powerful and our internet connections faster. In one sense the future is very bright indeed. 

Whilst technology provides enormous benefit, for every 'winning' technology or associated practice there is always an incumbent or competing solution that falls by the wayside or goes the way of the do-do.

The way of the do-do

For those unaware, the do-do was a large, flightless bird living on the island of Mauritius. Within a few hundred years of European traders arriving on its island it was extinct.

The analogy to technology Market Leaders is probably a good one:

- Market leaders often feel invincible (the do-do lived on an island and had no known predators);

- Market leaders become complacent (the do-do was flightless, complacent in an evolutionary sense);

- Market leaders rarely see the threat until it is too late (the do-do was wiped out by man, it couldn't have predicted the navigation and shipbuilding innovation needed to make this happen)

- Market leaders can disappear quickly particurly in a technology context where companies operate in "internet time"  (the do-do evolved for many thousands of years but disappeared in less than two centuries from the first Dutch trader arriving in Mauritius)

To illustrate this point, Facebook may seem to have an unassailable position in terms of its Social Platform but remember   MySpace had a similar lead over Facebook just a few years ago. The Encyclopedia Brittanica probably never saw the CD Rom as a threat and yet Encarta had a devastating effect on its sales. I'll bet Encarta never envisaged a free web encyclopedia like Wikipedia doing the same to it. The Music industry saw little threat in MP3s as they continued to make huge profits on their CDs. Could they imagine the powerful position that Apple would now hold in music distribution through iTunes? The list goes on.  

So who are the next winners and losers? Where are the next do-dos to be found?

"The Fool Predicts The Future, Criticizes The Present And Recounts The Past"

- Shakespeare within King Lear  

As the quote above suggests, it can be foolish to attempt to devine what will come and the future is not necessarily determined by the present nor the past. Putting this aside it can also be a bit of fun. Just don't bet your house on any of these events coming true!

I have provided my top 5 potential do-dos below - why not give me your list or do the same in the comments provided?

 

1. Stamps and the Postal Service

- Scandanavians are already testing paid SMS alternatives where unique codes are provided and written on the letter. Will courier companies be better placed to fill the role of national postage services like the Royal Mail as the numbers of letters sent continues to fall.

2. Books & Libraries

- if MP3s and iPods can do for physical music surely eBooks and Kindles can have the same effect on eBooks. If we continue to use digital book formats could libraries be replaced by subsidised group discount schemes for e-Books

3. Newspapers and Magazines

- News is "freely" available online, thank you Twitter and RSS feeds and newspaper circulation is down. Is the writing on the wall, pardon the pun

4. TV broadcasting

- Broadcasters are realising that anytime, anywhere content is a necessary component of their service. Viewing figures are also down, few programmes achieve more than 10m viewers (in the UK)

5. Print and TV advertising

- If traditional print and broadcast TV are in trouble then advertising revenue must be similarly threatened

I would be interested in your views on the mainstream technologies and practices that you think will win in the next few years (foursquare, Facebook Places anyone?) and those technologies, services and practices that will go the way of the do-do.

Perhaps the following quote will provide some much needed insight:

"The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed."

Attributed to William Gibson (Science Fiction Author)

  

I look forward to your comments

Alan

Alan Stevenson

Director - Energise2-0

About Alan Stevenson

Alan is co-Director with Dr. Jim Hamill, of Energise2-0 (www.energise2-0.com), a Social Media Marketing Agency. As a visiting lecturer in the Department of Marketing, Alan works closely with Michael Harker to provide engaging and thought provoking e-marketing and customer management courses that combine their respective practical and theoretical backgrounds.  

Talking about Software #5 Angry Birds – Product and Promotion

We’ve taken a very brief look at elements of pricing and place in the context of App marketing. The basic framework of the marketing mix has of course two further elements, product and promotion. Before we finish, let’s consider those – and do so in the context of possibly the most famous Game-App of all time – Angry Birds! An app by Rovio of Finland, it is an inaugural member of Apple’s App Hall of Fame. Angry Birds has sold an astonishing 50 million copies. No app has sold more. Players include David Cameron, Dick Cheney and a pantheon of sports and music stars.

Angry Birds Screenshot

Let’s look at part of an interview with the lead designer – Niklas Hed – where the discussion turns to the ethos and process of the games genesis and evolution:

Rovio was perfectly positioned to take advantage. It had learnt a lot from the triumphs and failures of its past games. It also had copious notes from focus groups it had organised over the years, during which Niklas and his colleagues had watched people playing games from behind a glass screen and recorded what the players found difficult, what excited them, what they found boring. The information from these sessions had then been used to produce a blueprint of the “perfect” mobile game. The checklist ran to several thousand words, but, one of the main things they learnt was that each level had to feel achievable.

“It’s important that players don’t feel that the game is punishing them,” Niklas says. “If you fail a level you blame yourself. If the pigs laugh at you, you think: ‘I need to try one more time.’”

They also knew it was important that any game they designed could be played in short bursts – occupying those periods of “downtime”, such as queuing for a coffee or waiting for a bus, that had formerly been devoted to staring into space or, perhaps, reflecting on life.

“You have to be able to play the game right away,” Niklas says. “We didn’t want any loading times.”

It was this principle that led to the introduction of the catapult, the game’s central feature. Players know immediately what to do with it and it makes the game more intuitive.

The game also had to appeal to both video game “virgins” and hard-core enthusiasts. “We knew it had to be simple but it couldn’t be too simple,” Niklas says.

Kendall (2011)

The promotion of the game was based on a very simple strategy. Rovio noted that Apple tended to highlight Apps in the store with strong colourful characters present in the game itself and imagery used in logo design. This meant the characters in the game became front and centre in design – and the name became Angry Birds rather than, say, Catapult. Examining potential partners to publish the game [games studios design and build, publishers market] Rovio plumped for a company called Chillingo (Chillingo, 2011) who had a good relationship with Apple and a track record of successful publicity campaigns. The strategy worked, Apple selected the game as a highlight of the Apps in the store, that generated publicity which led to downloads, which led to almost totally positive reviews – word-of-mouth – between consumers which led to more sales and so on in a virtuous circle that has required next to nothing in terms of traditional advertising expenditure.

Even more interesting than the way the game was promoted is the ways in which the game itself is now so strong as a brand that it is being used to help promote other products and has even led to game related merchandise – covers for phones, plush toys of the birds and the pigs and even a tie-in with an upcoming animated film called Rio. The clincher in respect of Angry Birds now being a ‘transmedia franchise’ (Pulman, 2011)? Angry Birds being included as part of a promotion in a Superbowl advertisement.

Look forward to the animated series!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chillingo (2011) About Us From: http://www.chillingo.com/about.htm

Kendell, P. (2011) Angry Birds: the story behind iPhone's gaming phenomenon, Daily Telegraph, From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8303173/Angry-Birds-the-story-behind-iPhones-gaming-phenomenon.html

Pulman, S. (2011) Angry Birds: Casual Gaming to Transmedia Franchise? From: http://transmythology.com/2011/01/17/angry-birds-casual-gaming-to-transmedia-franchise/