A Satirical Featherstone University Pokes Enjoyable At Higher Ed Privilege

Colorado Mesa University’s new promoting marketing campaign satirizing elitism in greater training is making a nationwide stir.

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Most universities like to assert that they assist college students learn to assume. But not Featherstone University. It discourages it, as a result of “tradition, after all, is too important to tamper with.” At Featherstone University — indelicately abbreviated F.U. — college students be taught that the key to future success is “surrounding yourself with people who pronounce ‘Versailles’ correctly.”

If that sounds unreal, it’s as a result of it’s. Featherstone University is a brand new advertisement created by Colorado Mesa University (a public college in Grand Junction, Colorado) meant to satirize elite schools and the outsized function that wealth and privilege can play in greater training. The aim of CMU’s advertising and marketing marketing campaign is to emphasise its personal priorities like ensuring {that a} faculty training stays inexpensive and accessible, develops essential pondering abilities, and prepares college students for productive lives.

Featherstone’s admission standards are ever so particular. It views enrollment as “a ceremony reaffirming that you were always meant to be here. Think of its requirements not so much as” hurdles,” but “filters” that guarantee solely the elite cross by means of.

Among these filters: candidates should submit a household tree that’s been illustrated by a noteworthy watercolorist; they will need to have a minimum of one oil portray of a direct ancestor hanging in a manor, yacht membership or non-public island residence; they have to know which polo mallet needs to be used for every season, and so they should show they’ll recite a sonnet whereas performing equestrian dressage.

Critical pondering will not be emphasised as a result of Featherstone needs its college students to uphold the identical beliefs their households have at all times held. “In a rapidly changing world, we take pride in ensuring nothing of substance changes at all. Tradition is our greatest innovation, and perpetuation is the sincerest form of loyalty.” As for the administration, Featherstone’s uppity headmistress Arabella Wrenford-Smythe serves as “more than a mere chaperone, she’s a living embodiment of Featherstone elegance — a guide who knows precisely when to whisper, when to judge, and when to adjust your posture.”

The advert, which concludes by making a recruiting pitch to college students that they need to apply to CMU, is ruffling a number of feathers in greater ed circles, however CMU President John Marshall told a Denver TV outlet that the message is a essential one. “There’s a deep sense that higher ed is off track, so we’re trying to address that in a very authentic and direct way while, hopefully, not taking ourselves quite so seriously,” Marshall stated, pointing to the outcomes of current polls displaying steep declines within the public’s belief and confidence in greater training establishments.

Marshall highlighted 5 issues he believes are presently plaguing greater training: it’s too costly, college students are burdened with an excessive amount of debt, schools supply too many irrelevant applications that gained’t result in higher jobs, it’s usually elitist, and college students are being taught “boutique, odd worldviews” which can be inconsistent with their actual lives.

Marshall stated the advert, which was launched a few weeks in the past, is emphasizing that within the perfect faculty classroom, “we’d like to be able to see a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and a MAGA hat sitting right next to each other, both free to ask questions, both not being ushered to the back or being denigrated in some way for their views but rather a place where kids can learn how to think critically and, frankly, be exposed to difficult ideas.”

In another interview marking CMU’s 100th anniversary, Marshall described the campaign as part of a broader attempt to strengthen middle-class families’ trust in the value of higher education. “This fictional world pokes enjoyable on the downside whereas emphasizing that CMU cares extra about college students’ values and who they’re as individuals than who they know or how a lot wealth their households have,” he stated.

Colorado Mesa University has an enrollment of greater than 10,000 college students, with 29% coming from historically underrepresented teams. Its CMU Promise covers full tuition for households incomes $70,000 or much less yearly.

Reactions

The Featherstone advert is producing a variety of buzz. According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, it pulled in 162,000 views on YouTube over its first week online. And CMU Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Brand Strategy Katlin Birdsall said that during the first week of the campaign the ad had gained nearly a quarter of a million views across all social platforms.

Hofstra University President of Marketing and Communications Terry Coniglio called the advertisement “brilliant,” according to the Daily Sentinel.

However, not every one is pleased with the advertisement’s tongue-in-cheek message, citing concerns that it might reinforce negative stereotypes as higher education finds itself struggling in a politically fraught environment. Teresa Valerio Parrot, principal at TVP Communications, criticized the ad’s negative tone. Quoted by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parrot said, “I am not a fan of any institution punching at any other sector of higher education. This is a time for higher education to come together and to talk about how it benefits our students and it benefits society, rather than to take on each other in the public sphere.”

Carol Keese, vice president for university communications at the University of Oregon, told the Chronicle she thought the Featherstone campaign was “wrongheaded” because “higher education is the biggest engine for social mobility the world has ever seen. It is not an engine that reproduces wealth and privilege to the exclusion of everything else.” Acknowledging that higher education has issues it needs to address, Keese added that the “CMU used the moment to ridicule a whole sector, and kind of ironically, in doing so, discount both its own value and the value of the degree that the students they’re supposedly talking to are seeking.”

CMU officials maintain that the ad promotes a “new handshake” between higher education and students who rely on merit and hard work for opportunity, aligning with the Featherstone campaign’s tagline: “If you need one thing extra actual, come to CMU the place we care about who you’re, not who you understand.”