“What are universities, but parking lots for youth”

(the interview was in French and I recall the quote as something like “Quelles sont les universités que les parkings de la jeunesse.” In other words, universities to Botta are the place we put youth because we don’t know what else to do with them. We don’t have good jobs for most eighteen year-olds, so we put them in universities to grow up for a few years and, if they get the education they deserve, well that’s an accidental by-product.

The second quote comes from my major professor, Bob Kingdon. I believe he was quoting George Mosse, the great scholar of German nationalism, but it may have been Garrett Mattingly, the great scholar of Renaissance diplomacy. Mosse was Kingdon’s predecessor at Wisconsin and Mattingly was Kingdon’s major professor. No matter, the quote was (again, roughly):

“Classes are for mediocre students. Good students would learn more by spending an hour at the library.”

You might debate either of these quotes, but for a long time I’ve been thinking that the university system is becoming unsustainable. State legislators are givign up on higher education, but in a very real way, I think educators gave up on education first. How so? When my father started at the University of Vermont, a standard teaching load was five courses per semester. When he left, it was five courses per year. Yes, it’s true that tuition has risen in part because university administrators now outnumber university faculty, but it’s also because universities gave up on education as their primary role and came to see research as their primary role. Let’s face it, cutting the number of classes professors teach in half at a school like UVM, which not so long ago was an undergraduate school with no graduate programs, has had a lot to do with raising the cost of tuition as well.

Meanwhile, faculty have a “pull the ladder up after us” mentality, by which I mean that the vast majority consider themselves liberal and pro-labor, yet universities have terrible labor practices, often employing adjunct teachers at starvation wages and no benefits. If faculty taught, on average, one additional course, that would save more money than hiring adjuncts. Of course it would mean many of those adjuncts would not work in university teaching, but I’m not at all sure they would be worse for it. But since academics as a whole are rarely known for their courage, don’t expect to see action on this front soon.

And there are other aspects to the rising tuition as well. Universities increasingly resemble Club Med with deluxe rec sports facilities and other amenities that are ultimately rolled into tuition in the name of attracting better students. All of this costs money and if the goal is actually educating people for their futures, we should save these frill for those students who are willing to pay for membership in a private gym or movie club or whatever (spoken as someone who spent more time than most at the gym and the campus movie club during my student days — these are great things; they should just be optional, not rolled into tuition).

I’m thinking of this after successive conversations with my brother about the crushing cost of college and after looking up the costs of some universities. My alma mater is now $48,000 per year for an out of state student (I had a full tuition remission when I went, so I don’t really know what the cost was, but it was a lot less than that). I remember as recently as 10 years ago my brother-in-law was at Cal Tech, then the most expensive school in the country at $35,000. Now that’s a bargain. Saint John’s, the liberal arts school with a “great works” curriculum is around $55,000 per year.

Let’s be real. How can it possibly be worth $55,000 a year to have someone guide you through the reading of Aristotle? If you have two children at Saint John’s, you’d be better off hiring a couple of out-of-work PhDs to come to your house and home school your kids through university. And by the way, that cost doesn’t even count opportunity cost from four years of lost labor. Let’s assume an average of $10 per hour for four years. That means the true cost is actually 75,000 dollars per year!

But this is where I get back to the quotes from Botta and Mosse. Three hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend on parking your kid for four years and, if the kid is going to Saint John’s he will graduate with no identifiable skill, no preparation for a job that would remotely prepare him for repaying that money.

Am I a calous philistine? Well, yes, but not because of what I just said. Let me take on some imagined counter arguments.

1. It’s a worthwhile long-term investment.

This is what the Ivy League schools used to say, because their grads made so much more money. Some research suggests this may not be so. Kids who were similar to those (SAT, rank in class, GPA) as those who went to Ivy League schools but who did not themselves go Ivy, had similar income to those who got Ivy League educations. Furthermore, Ivy grads had lower job satisfaction ten years after graduation than those who went to more modest schools (see NYT article). All of this makes me wonder whether you would see a similar phenomenon if you tracked highly motivated kids who could have gotten into Ivy League schools but chose not to go to college at all. We know that some who never graduated have done pretty well for themselves. I’m thinking of college dropouts like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison (these are the proof cases for Mosse’s comment that the brightest students don’t need classes). But I could also be thinking of the guy who did our tile work who makes $60 per hour without a single college course to his name (and he can’t keep up with the demand on his services, even working weekends quite often, out-earning all the humanities PhDs I know who are within 15 years of his age).

The second thing I would say is that if someone gave me $300,000 right now, I could within four years leverage that into a rental business that would be self-sustaining and support me for the rest of my life with plenty of time to read Aristotle. I wouldn’t even have to start a computer revolution or lay tile.

2. The value of a liberal education can’t be calculated in dollars. It’s about broadening kids and teaching them to think.

Fair enough, but there is always an opportunity cost and dollars allow us to see what it is. We know that for Saint John’s that cost is $300,000. Frankly, on that much money, I could travel around the world for ten years, visiting probably every country on the planet, learning two or three languages well, learning customs of far off lands, seeing countless new things and, by the way, having plenty of free time to read Aristotle should I so desire. I don’t think anyone could argue that a university education is broadening on that scale.

When I see tuition prices that really are only affordable to the ruling elite or America, when I see unpaid student loan debt crest one trillion dollars, when I see students graduating with English degrees owing $800 per month on their loans, when I see an educational system that tends to stifle creativity rather than encourage it, it makes me wonder if the whole costly edifice is about to crumble. I think the answer is yes. The university system as we know it, primarily a product of the nineteenth century, is poised for a major change and, for many in education, major pain. But I believe the financial burden of the system as it exists is no longer warranted by the benefits. I also think that such changes tend to be slow, which means that my friends in academia will mostly all be fine. They’ve got the ladder up after them and can breathe a sigh of relief. But if I were a parent now, I would seriously consider what else I could do with my money. If I were a student, I would be putting together “grant” proposals and business plans to get “angel investors” (i.e. mom and dad) to fund my Great Adventure (think of the Grand Tour of the seventeenth century) or my startup. And if I were a young person considering grad school with an eye toward university teaching, I would look upon the venture more carefully than ever.

So here’s a quick rundown of seven things every scholar should know about copywriting.

Get Over It

First, though, I need to have a private word with you scholars. For pretty much all of my adult life, I’ve been a scholar and a researcher. Until I discovered Seth Godin, I thought “marketing” was a dirty word. It’s not. Whether you are trying to sell soap, yourself, your cause or your religion, knowing some basic marketing and copywriting principles will help you down the road. It all boils down to a simple question: would you rather have your ideas rejected or ignored because they are misunderstood as a result of poor presentation or rejected on their merits?

A good copywriter focuses on one thing: getting the reader to take the desired action, whether that’s buying a product, donating to the Sierra Club, voting for their candidate, joining their religion or signing up for their newsletter. There is both a pull and a push at work:

• Push: all the reasons that the reader would benefit from taking the desired action (look younger, save the planet, save your soul)
• Pull: moving all obstacles out of the way (money-back guarantee, simple and secure payment, free trial).

Good copywriting demonstrates benefits and removes obstacles. Applications for fellowships or grants need to meet those same goals, but most scholars are woefully bad at it. I’m not saying I’m particularly good at it, but here are a few things you might learn.

WIIFM — What’s in it for me?

Copywriters know that their prospect always has one question in mind: what’s in it for me? I was shocked to get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member who suggested that I should accept a student because the course would be good for a student’s curriculum vitae. What vested interest do I have in padding someone’s resumé? More particularly, why would I want to pad that particular student’s resumé? What I want to hear is that the applicant can do the work and there is a very high probability that the student will actually take those skills and put them into practice. I think that’s fairly obvious for any similar course, especially one that offers a stipend to all participants as ours does.

Always stay focused on the benefit to the institution, granting agency or hiring committee. The benefit to the applicant is only relevant insofar as it also furthers the mission of the institution. In this case, the Meeter Center and I want to train researchers, so saying it will benefit the student by preparing her to conduct archival research is a benefit to both of us, but saying it will make the student look better or improve the student as a person is not relevant.

As an applicant, the key is to ask yourself “Why are these people taking applicants and offering money? What do they get out of it?” Before anything else, try to answer that question. You may not be able to answer it perfectly. You may see multiple reasons. You may see the wrong reasons, but at least you’ve figured out some reason. Anything in the application that does not specifically demonstrate that the course won’t be wasted on you, can be cut.

Features and benefits

This is the oldest saw in copywriting: focus on benefits, not features. Let’s say we’re talking about a car.

• Feature: rear-seat side impact airbags.
• Benefit: keep your children safe.

It is important to mention the feature, obviously. Not to do so would leave you with vague, vapid promises — “Keep the kiddies safe. Drive a SomeCar.” The more common error, though, is to list off features without saying why anyone should care. It’s essential to avoid that in grant and fellowship applications.

• Features:
  • Person: smart, well-read, engaging, excellent language skills, good writer, hard-working, drop-dead good looking and smells good too
  • Project: never been done before, studies the interaction of X and Y, examines the Blank Protocols.
• Benefits:
  • Person: will do valuable work, will put the money/class to good use, will make your institution look good
  • Project: will solve the long-standing question/problem of X, will allow future scholars to answer long-standing question, etc.

If you find yourself listing a “feature” and it doesn’t have a “benefit” to follow up on it, then either don’t list the feature, or figure out what the benefit is and make sure you highlight the benefit. Features only exist in copywriting to make your benefit claim credible. If you’re listing a feature that isn’t necessary to make the benefit claim credible, you’re wasting paper, ink and time.

Be Specific and Concrete

Every writing teacher, whether teaching copyrwriting or fiction, will say to be specific. How specific? This is where copywriters have an advantage. They can test two different ads, one that says “resulted in a 104% gain in efficiency” against “more than doubled efficiency” and see which one performs better (in the test I saw, it was the less specific one in this case). We can’t do that for grant and fellowship applications, but we know that in general, specificity beats generality and I’m surprised at how vague and general many applications are.

Let’s say you’re answering the question “Why do you want to take this course?” Consider three applicants. They each answer the question like this:

1. I’m hoping to do research for my dissertation on the price evolution of poker chips and that research will likely require use of manuscript sources.
2. My dissertation research on the price evolution of poker chips in Lyon from 1500-1800 will require me to read council registers and account books in the S series in the Archives départementales in Lyon
3. During my preliminary research for my project on the price evolution of poker chips, I came across many key documents the archives in Lyon that I was unable to read. In order to finish the project, I need better paleography skills.

Number one is actually pretty good. It could get a lot worse and I’ve seen a lot worse, but I understand that from grad students who may not have refined their research area yet. But a faculty member sent in an application basically saying he was a nice guy who thought the course would be interesting. Not good enough. But even considering the pretty good choices above, who seems more likely to put the course to good use? Who is more likely to work really hard?

If you are one of those younger scholars who may not have carved out a research area yet, you can still mention work that you admire and plan to emulate.

Avoiding Doubt

The first example above also sows doubt (only “hoping”?). It’s not by accident I gave that as an example. One applicant, by all appearances an excellent candidate with an MA and some teaching experience to her credit, wrote: “I am wanting to pursue a doctorate degrees in hopes of studying….” Any writing teacher would see the problem there. The average copywriter would grab his chest and gasp for breath.

Sadly, there is no worse training for dynamic writing than academia. Academia is perhaps the only domain where there is no penalty for being boring, but there is a harsh penalty for being imprecise. Academic writing demands attenuation and hedges — “We believe that in some cases it appears possible for a limited number of quatloos to transform into looquats given the right conditions.” A sentence like that would hardly raise an eyebrow in academia, whereas you would get attacked from all sides if you said “Quatloos transform into looquats.”

Copywriters, however, are always thinking about how the reader will respond and what possible interpretations and emotional reactions the reader might have. “I’m wanting… in hopes of” and other hedges make a very serious applicant appear risky, uncertain and hesitant. Is this person really committed to learning what I’m teaching? Do we really want to give a stipend to someone who is “hoping” to use the course knowledge?

Be Honest

One thing that surprised me when I started reading marketers and copywriters is the value they place on honesty. The calculation is simple:

1. Every item returned costs enough to negate 5–10 sales. Making claims that you can’t back up will cost too much.
2. It’s usually cheaper to make a second sale to an existing satisfied customer than to go out and find a new customer,  and nothing creates dissatisfaction like being lied to.

Those two things being true, deceiving the customer ends up being costly for anyone except fly-by-night outfits that want to make a quick buck and get out. All that to say that you shouldn’t claim to have come across key documents in the archives if you haven’t actually been there. Credibility matters and a single manifest exaggeration raises questions about the credibility of everything else.

Most of our applicants say their French is “fluent”. I have to say, the question is very poorly worded on the application, so I don’t blame them for answering that way. That said, it does raise questions when someone says that his French is fluent and then lists four semesters of college French as the sum total of his French training. What else is exaggerated? Again, this makes accepting the applicant seem like a risk.

Risk Reversal

The classic example of risk reversal in marketing is the guarantee. I’m afraid of spending all that money on a new car and taking the risk that I’ll be stuck with a dud. So the manufacturer says “You’re right. That’s a lot of risk for you, an individual. Let me take on the risk. You buy that car, and I’ll take care of all repairs for the first 5 years or 60,000 miles, whichever comes first. Will you buy it now?”

Obviously, scholars can’t fully reverse a risk in that way — you can’t offer to pay back your fellowship if you haven’t successfully completed your dissertation within six years. But you can address risk. We had one first-year grad student some years ago who had a mixed letter of recommendation. The faculty member had good things to say about the applicant, but had some reservations about specific weaknesses. The professor was honest with us and with the student, though, so he was able to say “I know that professor X has doubts about my ability in this area. I will, however, commit to work extra hard in order to make up for that deficiency”.

We took him. The course was hard for him, as expected, but he seemed to get a fair bit out of it and is now an advanced PhD candidate studying under one of the top scholars in the field. The result is that the professor retained her credibility. Next time I see a letter from her, I’ll know it means exactly what it says (see “Be Honest” above). But she gave the student a fighting chance to state how he would compensate for weaknesses. Not exactly a classic risk reversal, but it gave us a lot more to go on than a vague application with all the usual platitudes. I’m fairly sure that some better-qualified people were rejected that year, but the combination of specificity, honesty and risk mitigation in the application got that candidate through the door, even though we tend to accept students with stronger language skills than that particular student.

What’s Your Story?

Seth Godin says in All Marketers Are Liars that he really wanted to call it All Marketers Are Storytellers, because he believes that effective marketing requires a compelling and authentic story. The story is a lie only in the sense that any story, whether about events that actually happened or a work of fiction, is a lie — all stories leave things out and tell the tale selectively. Not surprisingly, the second edition is called All Marketers Tell Stories… Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All.

A grant application should also tell a story. That story is not your biography or a prose version of your resume. Notice that under “Be Specific”, example three is a story. There’s an arc to it. “Young student goes to Lyon, excited about research project on poker chips. Confronted with documents he can’t decipher, he looks for help and finds my course, just the thing he needs in his quest for arcane knowledge and scholarly bliss. If only there’s a spot for him.” A story need not be quite as personal as that, but you need a story that helps answer the question why you?

A Last Word

It’s not like getting into my class is a super rough competition. The financial award is only $500 for the two weeks and we accept over half the applicants, most of them in the summer after the second or third year of grad school (though we often admit one undergrad and one or two faculty members). Most of these students are soon going to be facing much stiffer competitions, like applying for Fulbright grants to do research in France, which this year had 25 slots for 197 applicants (12.7%). That’s a lot better than the 13 slots for 405 applicants for the UK (3.2%), but I would say it’s a fair bet that out of 200 PhD candidates, it’s fairly likely that 25 will have decent natural or acquired copywriting skills. If you’re not one of them, you’re not going to France on a Fulbright no matter how good you are. Simple as that.

Before applying for research grants to fund my dissertation, I came across one of the most helpful pieces of advice that I’ve ever read. It can be applied beyond grant applications I’m sure, but I took this advice and nailed down a Fullbright and, even more difficult to get, a Châteaubriand. There’s a lot that goes into a good grant proposal, such as showing that you’ve done your background research, that you have thought through the feasibility of the whole thing, that you’ve demonstrated that you have the skills, knowledge and contacts to pull it off and that the grant itself is essential for doing so.

But then comes the question of why and the authors pointed out that this is a common stumbling block, though it never should be (that is, you might have trouble proving feasibility, because that’s the nature of fresh research, but you should never be at a loss as to why finding an answer would be worth it). I’ve since had a chance to read several grant proposals and surprisingly, this is often where the applications fail. It’s not uncommon to see applicants who give a reason for their study that is no reason at all. Exampe:

Reason: “This has never been done before”
Objection 1: Maybe that’s because it’s impossible.
Objection 2: Maybe because it’s uninteresting.

In any case, the fact that something has never been studied before doesn’t mean it should and certainly not that I should give you money to do it. Also, the reasons you want grant money are not necessarily the reasons you deserve grant money and you always need to know which is which.