Chatham College is fiercely proud of the "World Ready Women" it graduates.

	Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette
	Don Dravenstott of Smithville, Ohio, shops for Slippery Rock University-branded clothing in the campus bookstore. His son, Erik, will be attending the school as a freshman this fall. MORE COVERAGE 'The Rock' let it roll when it came to marketing Online Graphic: A look at some campus slogans

S o proud, it went out and licensed those three words so no other college in America could promote its female graduates the same way.

If that seems like a case of college marketing on steroids, consider the elaborate pitches coming from just about every other campus these days.

The University of Pittsburgh, for one, went "show biz" with an 84-page book it mailed to influential supporters. The glossy cover shows Pitt basketball guard Julius Page and two other student leaders glammed out like 1930s stars, complete with top hats, canes and evening wraps, and posing next to a vintage auto to evoke an earlier golden era.

Inside, Pitt speaks of a new campus heyday, profiling 253 standouts, including a pioneering transplant surgeon, a former Miss America and a Nobel laureate.

"We suspect that you will enjoy reading about this astonishing array of overachieving Pitt humanity," states the book's introduction.

In the campus prestige wars, subtlety doesn't go as far as it once did. That's why schools are waging bold image-building efforts, often backed by consulting firms, focus groups and multimedia barrages as slick as anything found in corporate America.

Selling a college, some say, has become a bit like pushing luxury cars or soft drinks. And while prospective students often are the targets, they are not the only ones.

With the hunt intensifying for public and private aid dollars, schools are reserving some of their most polished pitches for donors who might drop a million or two on the campus, and for community leaders who can favorably sway the public's perception of the school.

And since colleges get to vote on other colleges for one part of U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings, campuses now market to each other in hopes of creating a buzz.

Some worry that all the salesmanship misses the point of an education. Others say it's inevitable.

"Schools are brands," said Peter Sealey, a former Coca-Cola marketer now on the business faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. "When you're a brand, you have to enhance that brand, you have to define that brand and you have to promote that brand because you're in competition with other brands."

School message

It didn't used to be that way.

"Academia was once this pristine place," he said. "We stood on the mountaintop and you discovered us."

Schools with identities built up over generations are summing themselves up in a sound bite.

"Advancing Knowledge. Transforming Lives," boasts Michigan State University.

"Where Leaders Learn," Seton Hall University proclaims.

"North of Ordinary," says the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

"It's all about you," promises the University of Saskatchewan.

If colleges have discovered brevity, it's because they had to, said Eric Sickler, a principal consultant with an Iowa firm, Stamats, whose client list extends into the Ivy League.

"We're bombarded with messages from all angles 24/7," he said. "They're competing with AT&T, Sprint, ESPN and MTV, and everything else."

It's no longer just a battle for market share, he said. It's a fight "for mind share."

That's partly why Slippery Rock University, a school that already had a catchy name, is waging a print, TV and radio campaign that includes an even pithier version of its name: It's now "The Rock."

Nationwide, college marketing is a $2.7 billion-a-year industry, according to an estimate by New York City-based Primary Research Group. Perhaps one in 10 campuses at any given time is in a major branding or rebranding effort.

The annual cost per institution can reach $1.5 million, depending on its size, said Primary's director of research, James Moses.

Even nationally known schools, Carnegie Mellon University and Pitt among them, are feeling increased pressure. Sure, everybody knows the value of a Harvard, Yale or the other schools in the U.S. News top 10, said Tim Westerbeck, managing director and principal with Lipman Hearne, a Chicago marketing firm.

"You go beyond that, and it gets pretty blurry in people's minds as to who's the best," he said.

That may be why it's not uncommon, say experts, for major universities to employ 100-plus people devoted to keeping their school on message.

$5 million promotion

Consider the one-upmanship between business schools at University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, Sealey said. They go after the same star faculty recruits and fret over which school has graduates with higher starting salaries.

"You talk about a Coke/Pepsi rivalry," he said. "Ford and GM have nothing on these people."

Sometimes, the fruit of a marketing push is more freshman applications, which allows a school to be more selective and, thus, more prestigious relative to its peers.

The University of Houston wanted more visibility among community leaders, including those influencing state and foundation support. So it's spending $5 million over five years promoting programs and prominent faculty such as playwright Edward Albee.

Wendy Adair, a campus administrator, said it was working: 65 percent of executives asked to name a college mentioned the University of Houston, up from 19 percent in an earlier survey.

Schools will obsess over what might distinguish them from the pack. A stellar faculty? An international focus? A spiritual base? Plentiful parking?

And when they find it, they aren't shy about sharing it.

Posted inside elevators and elsewhere at Centre College in Danville, Ky., is the school's "elevator speech." It's a set of talking points ranging from number of faculty with doctoral level degrees (97 percent) to Centre's place (tied for 45th) in the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges.

At Robert Morris University, even if the head of public relations is away, his voice, like others on campus, will be right in there pitching:

"This is ... at Robert Morris University -- Where success begins with you," the telephone recording says.

There are worries that some schools may be putting their own interests ahead of the students'.

Last year, U.S. News said it would drop from its rankings the share of accepted students who enroll, known as a school's yield rate. It did so amid concerns that schools were "gaming the system" by nudging their applicants toward making early decisions that raised the yield rate and, thus, made them look more prestigious.

As a marketing professor, Duquesne University's Audrey Guskey said she believed that sales pitches offered useful information. But, she added, in wooing young learners, how far should competing campuses go. Sushi bars? Cappuccino stands? Jacuzzis?

"You're dealing with young people and their parents who can be swayed very easily," she said. "Schools should take responsibility for how they're positioning themselves in the minds of these very vulnerable students."

Reeling in resources

At Allegheny College, Scott Friedhoff knows that as vice president for enrollment he can count on a steady flow of slick mailings from other schools that know he has a vote in the U.S. News survey.

"Some are blatantly obvious by inserting a cover letter that says, 'Recognizing that the U.S. News rankings ballot will soon be out ...' " he said. "Others are much less so and include something as informal as a post-it note saying, 'Thought you'd be interested.' "

"Our goal should not be moving up in the U.S. News rankings," he said. "It should be improving the educational experience."

But campus marketers say that is precisely what they do -- help campuses thrive by reeling in resources and promoting pride.

Chatham's Web site depicts "World Ready Women" as effective communicators who are socially conscious, environmentally aware, interested in public service and grounded in arts and sciences.

"Those words hold such power with our students and alumni, we felt it was in our interest to protect those words," said Chatham spokesman Paul Kovach in explaining why the school licensed them.

It simply makes sense, said Pitt spokesman Robert Hill, to communicate his school's many accomplishments regionally, nationally and beyond.

"We're going after faculty who are in the Ivy League and at the best public institutions," he said. "We can't afford to be a well-kept secret."

Likewise, donors prefer to invest in schools they feel "have already arrived," said Ann Rago, a Carlow College vice president. And what parent wants to tell friends at a cocktail party the name of their child's chosen campus, only to be met with blank stares?

"We know how to buy the names of top-performing students on the SAT. We know how to tailor the message," said Ross Feltz, a Slippery Rock spokesman. "But if you don't have the reputation by the time they get the direct mail, they won't give you the time of day."

That said, it all still sounds a bit foreign to someone such as English professor Bob Alexander, who's taught since 1970 at Point Park University, itself planning a $1 million branding campaign. Alexander notes the "corporate-ese" creeping into the campus lexicon, phrases such as change agent, mission driven and a new one he heard only last week: a school's "brand promise."

"It's not the view of the university I had as a student," he said. "Then again, when I was a student, I wasn't responsible for running the place."