ERIC Number: EJ1139706
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1750-8487
EISSN: N/A
Education on the Rails: A Textual Ethnography of University Advertising in Mobile Contexts
Symes, Colin; Drew, Christopher
Critical Studies in Education, v58 n2 p205-223 2017
As universities have succumbed to market discourses, they have adopted advertising strategies. It is not uncommon to see advertisements for them displayed in such mobile spaces as railway stations and alongside highways. Whilst it is true that such environments have always sought to take advantage of populations in transit, the fact that higher education institutions have turned to them as promotional sites, reflects the fact that the "transit" demographic now includes large numbers of young people and high school students. In this paper, a sample of higher education advertisements found in Sydney's transit spaces is analysed along with the "rationale" provided by advertising companies responsible for their design. It is argued their existence reflects the fact that universities compete against one another for students and need to develop a persuasive "brand". Thus in line with neo-liberalist constructions of subjectivity, they individualise the educational experience, and translate that experience into an economic asset, as a value-adding process. It is of note then that much of the imagery and copy of the advertising "visualises" education as a journey and underpins the fact that mobility is an inescapable predicate of quotidian life.
Descriptors: Advertising, Ethnography, Universities, Transportation, Economic Factors, Mobility, Foreign Countries, Neoliberalism, Figurative Language, Visual Stimuli
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A