...while the European Higher Education Area improves transparency between higher education systems, as well as implements tools to facilitate recognition of degrees and academic qualifications, mobility, and exchanges between institutions....Most importantly, all participating countries have agreed on a comparable three cycle [bachelor's, master's, and doctoral] degree system.

The EHEA currently comprises 46 countries, and while the Bologna Process (like any multinational policy framework) is subject to criticism, it is here to stay for a while, and it is influencing higher ed policy across Europe.

I wondered how Bologna might affect the development of alumni relations across the countries involved? I asked two people who are very knowledgeable in this area: Dr. Daniel Guhr and Simon Lange of Illuminate Consulting Group. Through Illuminate's consulting practice (which focuses on international strategic development in higher ed) and their own diverse educational experiences, Dan and Simon have well-informed, high level perspectives. With their permission, I am sharing some of their basic thoughts on Bologna and alumni relations.

With the goal of keeping this post a readable length, I am presenting their answers to just two questions here. A future posting will look at additional aspects of this topic.

What will Bologna mean for international alumni relations?

Daniel Guhr: There are domestic and international aspects. The domestic outcome is unclear. In practice, many universities are encouraging bachelor's degree alumni to stay on for a master's degree. Since alumni relations in most of continental Europe is still in its infancy, there is not an established framework that Bologna can change in practical terms. Global brand leverage will be important, and Bologna can provide a more globally recognized degree. But there is a missing component in practical terms: a well-established framework for international alumni relations. Alumni themselves may increase the demand for this, but that doesn't require Bologna. It is happening already, albeit at modest levels.

Simon Lange: We can expect a modest increase in alumni demand for university support. Over time, Bologna's relative emphasis on more vocationally-oriented degrees (especially at the undergraduate level) will create a pool of alumni whose educational experience is essentially a targeted preparation for the job market, more so than in the past. Future alumni and their universities will gradually improve their understanding of brand leverage, and the potential impact of well-designed alumni programming.

Are there any examples yet of international educational brands adapting to the Bologna Process?

Daniel Guhr: The standardization of degree structures officially concludes this year, but some transitions will take years. It's a bit early to say how Bologna might affect the educational brands, although we should expect some impact eventually.

Simon Lange: One example is Berlin's Einstein Foundation, in part an early attempt to push brand differentiation (ironically, by creating an umbrella organization to promote the research excellence of several institutions). In addition to attracting research funding, the Foundation's goals include increasing the visibility of Berlin as a center for science and research. I have my doubts, but alumni could potentially benefit in terms of brand leverage.

A future posting here will look at 

• the prospects for alumni loyalty to a specific institution; 
• threats and challenges to alumni engagement under Bologna; and 
• the most likely time frame for changes to appear.

Why do you think an investment of resources in private-label social networks is a bad one and under what circumstances would you change your mind? Do you, for example, see any potential in LinkedIn alumni groups?

On the topic of LinkedIn Groups, my short answer is "Yes, I see potential." I've explained why in prior posts. Recently, for example, I wrote about using Group discussions on LinkedIn, and the second half of my posting about social network growth last July contains my latest views about making LinkedIn Groups useful to alumni associations. Last April, my colleague Elizabeth Allen guest blogged about managing Groups, and has written about social site group management on her own site as well (and plans to do so in the future). 

[Updated 31 October, 2009: Here's another posting from Liz Allen about using LinkedIn Groups effectively: LinkedIn Group Management: Are You Using the Tools?]

As for an alumni association building its own site, I was a little surprised CASE CURRENTS pursued this in the article I mentioned last week. The value of asking the single question ("Is it worth it to have a private label network site?") has decreased steadily with the rise of third-party sites such as Facebook. 

Instead of a single question, now there are several inter-related questions to answer, and the answers will vary from institution to institution.

• Can we provide alumni (and students) with content or services they can't get elsewhere? 
• Does our audience need this content, either because it helps them solve a problem or because it fulfills some desire for them? 
• How many alumni need to be active, for how long, and how frequently - and in which ways - before we can declare that our site is a "success"?
• Can portability address the issue of putting our brand in front of our alumni, without requiring them to visit our site?
• What do we measure to evaluate the service, and how do we compare our information to metrics from other venues (including third-party services and traditional, face to face interaction)?
• How about opportunity cost? Could time spent on our in-house community be better spent on traditional activities, third-party site community management, or new endeavors?

The point is, arguing for or against school-hosted and school-managed network sites is complicated, and will become more complex as commercial services (some of which are yet to be invented) provide additional utility to alumni. My initial feeling is that in the face of tight budgets, static or decreased staffing, and more external venues to monitor, only organizations with very generous resources can justify the commitment to designing, building, launching, marketing and maintaining a truly private in-house site. 

As for the other part of Peter's question (about "when I might change my mind"), I will do so when third-party sites are flexible and open enough to allow seamless integration with our own online communities. If alumni associations didn't have to think of social networks in terms of "public" or "private" and "open" or "closed" then this wouldn't be an issue. We would be talking about functionality and utility and not access. Meanwhile, it is very important to remember that LinkedIn and Facebook are not completely "open" networks – yes, anyone can join, but you can't connect with their members unless you join as well. They are "walled gardens" too – they're just vastly larger than our alumni-only walled gardens. 

We have many other challenges in the meantime: understanding changes in regional club or chapter behavior, partnering with career offices in a weak jobs environment, the evolving integration of printed and online "publications," the relationship with fundraising activity – the list is long. Even if you are lucky enough to have the resources for staffing an in-house community online, you still have to address how our audiences expect and need us to participate in third-party sites. For almost all of us, the answer is still difficult to see clearly – we are still in the early stages of true online community.

I am interested to hear examples of how both internal and external services are helping your program, or harming it. Leave a comment.

The October 2009 issue of CASE CURRENTS magazine was sure to make it into this blog. But this posting isn't about what I thought I'd be writing about.

I was ready to launch a rant about whether private label social networks are a good investment for cash-strapped under-staffed alumni operations (answer: No). Then I noticed the informative article about reputation management by Kim Fernandez (Operation Reputation: How to manage and protect your institution's online image, p. 32. CASE member log in required for online access). This is a good resource for educational institutions navigating the sometimes turbulent waters of unmoderated online discussions.

The two paragraphs that caught my attention were about Ohio State University's reaction last spring when a student questioned university president Gordon Gee's membership on the board of an energy company. The company was under scrutiny for questionable environmental practices. Rather than ignore the question, answer the question, or thank the student for participating in the discussion, university officials deleted the question and disabled the comments function on that page.

A few days later, after some negative publicity, the school reinstated the commenting capability on its Facebook Page. I recently presented this as an example of a school that "learned how social media work, and how to live with the uncertainties of Web 2.0." I believed – or rather, I assumed – that OSU's decision resulted from a thoughtful understanding of the new landscape we face, and an awareness that someone who complains or challenges the school is an engaged constituent. The most important thing, I explained, is not whether they agree with everything the school does, it's that they care enough to participate in the discussion.

But it turns out I was wrong about OSU's reasons for reinstating Facebook fans' ability to leave comments. 

In CURRENTS I read that 

Ted Hattemer, director of new media at the university, says the policy reversal boiled down to a free-speech issue. 'What we found is that...Ohio State property has the requirement of meeting a basic freedom of speech. We quickly reversed the decision [to remove the post] once we figured that out, thanks to good advice from our legal affairs departments.'

I'm all for free speech, but that's not what this is about. Making this decision on the basis of a legal opinion makes OSU technically correct, but reveals a lack of awareness as to why "free speech" is important in online forums.

Students, alumni and friends expect to be heard because they can be heard – not because a lawyer said it's OK for them to be heard.

The silver lining may be that the next time a well-intentioned senior administrator asks of your Facebook Page, "But what if a student criticizes us?" you can say that it's not a problem: OSU's new legal precedent - finally - allows people to use the internet to express their opinions.

It's interesting to ask something similar of a college or university. If I told you that Oxford or Princeton was going to shut its doors, would you suggest that they should be bailed out? Protected? If so, would you advise using public money for the cause?

Many of the most prominent schools have been around for hundreds of years. 

Are they "too old to fail"?

The University of Bologna is more than 900 years old; just about the only organizations that resilient and long-lasting seem to be universities and organized religions.* 17 American colleges, universities and schools operating today are older than the United States itself. Few national governments can claim the long runs of which schools like these can boast. 

So schools last a long time. But what exactly is it that persists? Is the school we revere today really "the same" as the one that first bore its name? Of course not.

Schools (like many organizations) survive in name, but they must rebuild, reimagine and retool themselves ceaselessly, one small segment at a time. Saying that Bologna hasn't changed is like saying that a Model T Ford in an antique car show is "the same car" that Henry Ford rolled off the line in 1920. In reality, piece by piece it gets fixed up, "restored," and "maintained." A headlight here, a bumper there. Engine parts wear out and are replaced. Rubber moldings dry and crack and new ones are attached. The body fades and pits and the car is sanded and repainted. The upholstery gets torn, and....well you get the idea. Is it really the same car?

And so it is with our schools. We are lucky in some cases to have architecturally significant buildings that survive, but even those have to be updated for technological reasons, for safety, to please donors, or increasingly, to be "sustainable." So the buildings – like the institutions they serve – survive, but in forms that are new and often distant from their historical roles.

U.S. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (Brown University class of 1881) famously quipped of his alma mater, "It is always the old Brown and it is always the new Brown." We would be hard pressed to sum it up more succinctly or more eloquently. And we'd be ill-advised to forget it.

* Iceland established a parliament in 930 A.D., but had no centralized administration until about 330 years later. 

Photo of old buildings and new students at the University of Bologna, from Michele Ursino via Creative Commons. Click photo to enlarge.

As I expected, there were a few more worthwhile ideas that I had jotted down last July, almost all of them comments from Tim O'Reilly. Here they are in bullet point form:

• Tim O'Reilly, in the discussion about what role institutions can play in their constituents' lives, said: "If the job is relevant [to students, alumni and donors], the institution will figure it out. It's not about 'how do we protect the old ways we used to do those jobs?'"  

• O'Reilly again: Traditional higher education will suffer if it can't adapt to new attitudes toward learning, to new people doing things in new ways (his examples: the University of Phoenix and Canada's Athabasca University). "We may remember how things used to be and remember those who suffered. The parvenu companies that did something 'crazy' may end up as the leaders." 

• O'Reilly defined publishing as "spreading the ideas of innovators" (a not very subtle reference to the fact that he owns a publishing company). Universities should ask, "What do we really do? For whom do we do it? Can we do it better with the aid of new technology?" 

• Asked whether internet-based news was "dumbing us down," O'Reilly replied astutely that he's given 90-minute interviews to newspaper reporters who then quoted him in a single sentence that misrepresented his main point.   

• Finally, O'Reilly echoed something I mentioned here long ago: "The internet is just a user interface." I quoted Cem Sertoglu in January 2008 to the effect that the "internet is the dumbest network of all."

And in a typical instance of converging thought-patterns, Shirky again surfaces on this exact topic: 

...[T]he internet itself is just a vehicle for moving information back and forth – it's up to the computers sending and receiving information to make sense of it....The internet does not know what it is being used for.... [Here Comes Everybody, p. 157]

This provides us with the ability "to design and try new communications tools without having to ask anyone for permission." Like...the World Wide Web!

Final note: Despite a decidedly technical flavor to many of the sessions at 2009's Summit, there was no wireless access in any of the meeting rooms at the Hyatt hosting the conference in San Francisco. Not because CASE didn't request wifi for attendees; apparently Hyatt doesn't even have the ability to deliver internet access in its conference rooms. I find this mind-boggling. Last time I checked, the hotel's business offices had internet, as did the guest rooms. Let's hope the Marriott in New York gives us better online access next July.

HDR photo of Times Square from Nimo Photography via Creative Commons. That's the Hilton though – the CASE Summit will be at the Marriott.  

You may be familiar with Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions by 19th century author Edwin Abbott. Flatland is a two-dimensional land populated by polygons, and the story satirizes Victorian England's hierarchical social structure. Of equal interest to many readers is the book's clear articulation of the mathematical ideas behind different dimensions.

The narrator, named A Square, sees A Sphere (a visitor from a three-dimensional place called Spaceland) move through Flatland. But A Square doesn't recognize the visitor as a sphere, because he has no knowledge of the three-dimensional world the sphere inhabits. From A Square's vantage point as a flat observer, the sphere passing through the plane he inhabits looks like a single point that grows into a line. It then shrinks to a point again before disappearing magically (click the illustration from the book to view full size). A three-dimensional object is unrecognizable, and is beyond comprehension to a two-dimensional being. But if he could be lifted up above the plane he inhabits, A Square would see the relationship between the sphere and the plane. 

I think that A Square's plight is analogous to that of many current undergraduate students when they interact with alumni. The students' perceptions are limited in time and space by the very nature of their experience; when an older, experienced alumnus passes through the student's world, context limits their ability to recognize the graduate for what he or she really is: a rich resource, a person with experience and insight that the student could use, if only the student could rise above the Flatland of the insulated student environment and gaze upon it from Spaceland.

Once again the one and only conference focusing on alumni education and alumni lifelong learning is ready to convene. And there is time for you to sign up.

The friendly group convenes October 11 to 14, 2009 at beautiful Fallen Leaf Lake in Northern California. Registration is open until Monday, September 28 (in a few days!) so plan to join the group and make great connections with peers while enjoying stimulating conversation, interesting presentations and one of the most beautiful meeting locations in the U.S.

Conference details are here:

    Minary Conference 2009 Web Site

And here's the Agenda and Schedule:

    Minary Conference 2009 Agenda

The organizers expect some last minute sign ups, so the attendee list will be updated soon with the latest registrations.

Meanwhile you can contact the lead organizers with any questions:

Becky Zrimsek
Director, Carleton College Alumni Affairs
rzrimsek@carleton.edu
800/729-2586 or 507/222-4206

and

Kevin Conley
Director, Cavalier Travels
University of Virginia
ktc5w@eservices.virginia.edu

Here's my write up of last year's announcement, with a little more description:

• Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
• How to Build Your Network by Brian Uzzi (Harvard Business Review)
• Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts
• The Network Thinker – a blog about self-organizing behavior in networks

The early registration fee of $595 for travel planners (such as alumni association staff members) includes "most meals," according to the organizers. That fee applies to those booking their lodging for the conference at its official hotel: the Westin in Providence. And the hotel rate is discounted too: $119 single or double, per night.

And with budget constraints in mind, ETC is offering up to $100 savings on successive registrations from one institution.

Registration will be available very soon (during September), so keep an eye on the web site:

Educational Travel Conference, 2010

And sign up early. The early registration deadline is 9 December, 2009 (savings of $30 on registration). The discounted hotel rate of $119 at the Westin in Providence will be available until the ETC block sells out (typically by November).

Mini Overview of Conference Content:

• Three session tracks: strategy, operations, and marketing.
• Agenda spanning social networking to consumer and marketing trends to innovative programming.
• New sessions (including pre- and post-conference workshops) on topics from creative marketing to strategic planning, to hands on workshops to e-mail and web marketing.
• Part I of ETC’s curriculum on the fundamentals of mitigating risk and vetting safety issues for your travel programs.
• Post-conference time to recap the best take-home ideas and develop an immediate action plan with travel planners like yourself.

If you haven't attended ETC, then you should also know that there are always interesting outings that get you away from the conference hall and hotel. For example, Providence's unique Waterfire program is on tap for ETC 2010.

A personal note: I lived in Rhode Island for 12 years, including seven years in Providence. It has a ton of history, an incredible art museum, interesting architecture, and excellent Italian food. And Pastiche, the best dessert and pastry bakery in New England (if not the country). For the curious traveler, Providence is worth the visit.

Meanwhile - for specific questions, you can email ETC's organizers at Conference@Travelearning.com. See you there.

Bear with me for a minute

The serious part is an admonition:

Monitor your institutional brand online to the greatest extent possible.

In the past few months I have posted alumni-related comments from Twitter, and it would actually be easy to fill an entire blog with nothing but examples of people making comments about their alma mater or fellow alumni on Twitter.

I'm resisting that temptation, but I still have to share this one. I saw this on Twitter a few weeks ago and for some reason, saved it:

Later the same day I saw yet another tweet referencing high school alumni. It used the word "infamous" and here's what I saw when I clicked the embedded Wikipedia link:

Something tells me that Kevin, the "Youtube Comedy Star" listed here, may have had a hand in editing his high school's list of notable alumni. Nonetheless, it just illustrates that keeping an eye on institutional references is a good idea.

Meanwhile (here comes the less serious part), a blog called io9 follows all things science fiction-related. And a posting this weekend asked the important question, "What are the top schools when it comes to producing super-villains?"

...it's time for students to turn their thoughts back to school and classes. But what if your area of study is supervillainy? We look at the top schools for aspiring supervillains.

You may have your own schools to add to their list of 15 institutions of evil learning (which includes DC Comics' Legion Superhero Academy, whose grads created an alumni affinity group known as the Legion of Supervillains). But I laughed when I saw one commenter's almost-too-easy suggestions for expanding the list: