Implementation of Ethical Higher Education Marketing

Abstract

With consumerism changing students to customers and teachers to service providers, ever more vulnerable and naïve students enrol and, instead of collaboration between institutions, there is competition. There has been a call in the literature to face these challenges through ethical leadership in universities. Specifically, concern has been expressed over higher education marketing practices. In response, we attempt to construct a virtuous model of marketing ethics within higher education institutions’ values. We attempt to defend interconnectivity between the virtues of integrity, trust, fairness, and empathy under the direction of phronesis and seek to inform those responsible for making marketing higher education. We envision higher education’s marketing relationships as having the potential to endure, where universities ethically lead rather than reflect ethical norms, and where academics are encouraged to speak out. We discuss how it might be implemented.

Notes

1. “Marketing on American campuses has gone from being an auxiliary function—nearly a suspect activity—to one that receives the full endorsement of campus leadership,” said Robert Moore, president of Noel‐Levitz (THE, 2009).