Branding education

Maybe I've played too much "Grand Theft Auto," but when I think of the color red, I think about blood. \nAnd when I think of the letter "J" I think of the word "joint." \nInstead of conjuring images of a drug deal gone wrong, leaders of the School of Journalism think red banners with a giant "J" on them will get people to think of "media careers that matter" as part of their new branding campaign. \nJournalism school Dean Trevor Brown believes such a campaign is necessary to bring more students and better faculty to the school.\n"Brown said that both within and outside of the University, competition for students, faculty and resources has increased. To keep up, other schools and programs have been aggressively marketing themselves with slogans, brochures and commercials. The J-School asked Hirons & Company Communications, a Bloomington-based advertising agency, for help with a comprehensive branding project," according to a post on the J-school's Web site.\nI applaud the J-school's lofty goals, but I have a problem with the commercialization of education.\nCatchphrases are for fast-food joints, not higher education. The journalism school is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 in the country. That should be more than enough of a reason to attract students.\nHeck, it's what attracted me. I had to go to school in-state, and I briefly considered Ball State and Purdue, but when it came right down to it, I chose IU because of its high ranking.\nDoes the J-school even really want students so easily hoodwinked by banners and free pencils and T-shirts with a new logo? Shouldn't they want future journalists who aren't so easily bribed?\nAnd why on Earth should they be so obsessed with pure numbers? I would much rather go to a journalism school with lower enrollment and higher requirements, similar to the Kelley School of Business, than one that lets in any schmoe with a 2.20 grade point average. \nThen there's the matter of the catchphrase itself.\nBecause the J-School has now adopted the phrase "media careers that matter," are we to assume that for the decades before it was just pumping out graduates to do work that doesn't matter?\nThe whole thing just confuses me, and I wish they would put more time into improving the classes, which is a matter that also needs some consideration.\nWhat bothers me the most about this whole branding campaign is that the J-school had to outsource the advertising project to Hirons & Company Communications.\nI hear a lot of complaints from people in the J-school who are royally ticked off because they want to do public relations yet are stuck in almost exclusively traditional journalism classes until their junior year.\nWhy couldn't a class have been set up where these PR students could have worked in several groups to come up with a new label for the J-school? It would have been a lot cheaper; they would have gotten some great real world experience to put on their résumés, and I'm confident they could have come up with something that wouldn't make people think of marijuana whenever they walk past that giant "J."\nThat lack of forethought just confirms that those in charge of the J-school care more about pushing out as many graduates as possible rather than giving them a quality education.\nEditing ideas and making them as cohesive as possible is a major part of journalism, but that philosophy seems to have been put on the backburner in favor of whatever gimmick will get more people to enroll.