TO PRINT OR NOT TO PRINT? That is the question more and more institutions are contemplating when budgeting for their publications targeted to prospective or current students. Whether they are called digital natives or members of the Net Generation, there is no question that teens and young adults are superusers of the internet.
While most of their free time is spent surfing the web, exchanging instant messages, and networking with their friends on Facebook or MySpace, are they going to spend enough time flipping through all the heavy-stock viewbooks, brochures, and magazines inundating their mailboxes?
Most college publications are now offered in an electronic format.
Take the case of the prospective students Howard and Matthew Greene mentioned in their column "Wading through the Viewbooks," published in this magazine's June issue. Last spring during the final college selection process, these independent education consultants asked graduating seniors what had and hadn't mattered in their searches. "What did not matter included fancy, fancier, and fanciest college mailings," wrote the Greenes after highlighting the efforts, the creativity, and the tons of paper going directly from the mailbox to the recycling bin.
Think this example is merely anecdotal? The Noel-Levitz report "E-Expectations: The Class of 2007" published in October 2006 confirms these observations. The national survey of 1,018 high school juniors conducted by phone in 2006 found that 56 percent would rather look at a website than read brochures sent in the mail.
However, this survey didn't sign the death sentence of printed pieces either: 64 percent reported their preference for receiving information from a school on their list via mail over e-mail. Although an e-mail message and a website are totally different animals from the student recipient's point of view, these apparently contradictory results demonstrate the lack of a definitive answer to the print versus electronic question.
Completed by 218 professionals working mainly in the marketing and communication office of their institutions, the online survey about the state of print and electronic publications in higher education I created for this column aimed to shed some light on this topic. Although this survey was filled out on a voluntary basis from July 9 to July 25, 2007, and can't pretend to be statistically representative, it uncovers some emerging trends:
When in doubt, institutions let their audiences choose the format.
Respondents were asked which format (print only, electronic only, and print with an electronic version) their institution uses for the following publications: academic program brochure, admissions brochure, annual report, calendar of events, course catalog, application package, campus news, student handbook, financial aid handbook, fundraising material, magazine, newsletter, press kits, and viewbook. With the exception of the viewbook (47 percent in print only), these publications are offered in an electronic format most of the time.
News is going electronic only.
News-oriented publications are the most likely to be available in an electronic format only, whether they are packaged as campus news (46 percent electronic only), calendars of events (59 percent electronic), or newsletters (29 percent).
The good days of printed publications are gone.
Tighter budgets and audience preferences are shifting efforts from print to electronic. More than three quarters (77 percent) of the respondents confirmed they started to or were planning to rely more on electronic publications (web, blog, e-mail, PDF, RSS, etc.) to reduce their print budget. Only 36 percent reported an increasing print budget over the past two years, against 44 percent for an electronic budget.
There's still a future in print for some publications.
When asked which printed publications couldn't be replaced by an electronic version, the majority of survey respondents agreed that magazines, fundraising materials, admissions brochures, and viewbooks should still be printed. Surprisingly, there was a tie between the pro-print and the proelectronic camps for annual reports.
