Community Colleges Team Up in Ad Campaign

“Why a Community College?” asks the Orange County advertisement.

In reply, the ad quotes students with answers such as, “My courses were responsible for my career.”

The large newspaper ads include photos of community college students, a map showing the eight community colleges in the county, phone numbers and dates that fall classes begin.

The ads are part of a new, cooperative venture by all eight community colleges in Orange County. The venture is the first of its kind in the state and it is being copied by other districts, education officials say.

“We got together and agreed that it’s a good idea to promote community college as an entity, as a generic thing,” said Donna Hatchett, public relations officer for Rancho Santiago (formerly Santa Ana) College.

Real Students Used

“We use real students in the ads, but we don’t say which college they come from. We think the students are typical of our students in all of the community colleges in Orange County.”

The joint campaign is unusual because elsewhere in California, community colleges frequently battle each other for students. In Los Angeles County, a fight over community college transfers provoked so much tension that Gov. George Deukmejian last month vetoed a $5-million loan for the debt-plagued district unless Los Angeles agreed to free-flow transfers.

The cooperative movement in Orange County began last summer during an informal meeting of the public information officers for the eight community colleges

Hatchett recalled: “Community colleges were facing tuition for the first time. There was a feeling that we all had to recruit more aggressively than ever before. So at the meeting last summer, I suggested that our problem was bigger than a single college district. I said that we were suffering sort of an image problem because the governor had been questioning our mission and the Legislature had been arguing over tutition.”

Other Officers Agreed

The other public information officers “agreed that it would be a good thing to pool our resources and advertise jointly; to promote the community colleges of Orange County generically,” she said.

The joint ad campaign is possible because the four community college districts in the county have had interdistrict transfer agreements for the past five years. Those allow students anywhere in the county to take courses at any community college, regardless of district lines.

The colleges say they couldn’t afford such an ad campaign if it weren’t for the pool arrangement. “Each of the eight colleges pays $1,800,” said Hatchett. “That allows for a total of 16 ads.”

In addition to the cost, the colleges share the work of writing and disseminating a series of radio commercials.

But there hasn’t been total harmony in the project. Last spring, Fullerton College dropped out, although its sister college in the North Orange County Community College District, Cypress College, decided to continue.

Al Busch, public information officer at Fullerton College, said: “We decided to use our own mailers last spring. One problem we had was that the joint ads gave no way of measuring their effectiveness.”

Fullerton Rejoins Program

Busch said Fullterton College has rejoined as a partner in the current campaign. “The ads now have telephone numbers we can use to tally the numbers of calls and responses,” Busch said.

Fullerton College’s temporary withdrawal from the project produced a controversy on that campus. The student newspaper lambasted the college administration, claiming that Fullerton had become sort of a “black hole” in the community college firmament. Several Fullerton professors also complained about the go-it-alone policy.

No precise evidence of the ads’ effectiveness is available, its promoters agree. An unscientific poll of people in line to register at Cypress College indicated that up to 40% had seen the newspaper ads.

Community colleges in Central California and the Sacramento area this year adopted the idea. Other community colleges have asked Orange County colleges for information.

Fred Klass, the state chancellor’s director of legislation, recently praised the Orange County move. “It pools resources, and it promotes unity.”