The Most Important Challenge For Colleges Isn't Price--It's Attention

Kara Miller:

This is one of my favorite anecdotes: Last year, the University of Phoenix enlisted renowned Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen to record a lecture. The university reserved a harbor-view room for Christensen and populated it with young people, so that the camera operators could record their reactions.

Before he began to speak, Christensen noticed that the audience appeared unusually engaged and attractive.

"What school do you guys go to?" he asked.

"We're not students," a young man told him. "We're models."

When Christensen told me this story, I laughed. (Hear the whole interview here.) But the University of Phoenix is serious -- and smart. Putting a Harvard professor in front of a lecture hall filled with models is an acknowledgment that, in a Web-recorded lecture, appearance counts -- even the few seconds of cutaways to reactions from gorgeous, engaged "students."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 20, 2012 4:09 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas