Thinking Ahead Commercial-University of Phoenix. 20 July 2007. YouTube. Web. 21 September 2010.
For profit colleges such as University of Phoenix are the fastest growing segments of higher education and have been for at least the last decade. Quickly surpassing traditional not for profit higher education institutions, these schools enroll and graduate more minority, women and low-income students and offer increased access to higher education through completely online degree programs. The introduction of internet technology and new social demographics into higher education technology require new metaphors to advertise and attract students to for profit education and online education, historically controversial battlegrounds in the arena of adult education. Long accused of low academic standards, questionable recruiting practices and low completion rates, and more recently the subject of government investigations targeting high student loan default rates, online and for profit education is very much still establishing its relevance to the field of higher education and its significance to culturally established ideals of success, freedom, equality, progress and enlightenment.
In the style of traditional product marketing, University of Phoenix works to establish a cultural framework for online education rooted in the prevailing narratives of technology, education, and success. In the intersection of the Selfe piece “Lest we think the revolution is a revolution” and the Lakoff and Johnson piece “Metaphors we live by”, advertising for online higher education requires the establishment of new metaphors to sell the benefits of this product, metaphors that emphasize our culturally ingrained narratives relating to technology and education while ignoring the negative aspects of the product that are contradictory to these ideals. Much like the marketing of brand new car or a luxury vacation, this University of Phoenix commercial markets online education by connecting emotions and ideals to the purchase of higher education and the benefits of technology being infused into higher education. This commercial advertises higher education and technology as life-style items, and as discussed in the Selfe piece, taps into established narratives of technology and education as increased access, the land of equal opportunity, and progress to give meaning to this new cross section of technology and higher education.
A cursory viewing of the commercial surprisingly reveals that very little of the textual and visual components directly reference education or technology. As discussed in the Lakoff and Johnson piece, the context of the commercial relies heavily on established metaphors for higher education and technology and thus little visual or textual references are needed to connect viewers to these concepts, despite the newness of the online college phenomenon. Visually the commercial takes place outside of the classroom and the accompanying text posits University of Phoenix as higher education for the “real world”. Higher education is presented in the metaphor of enlightenment and improved lifestyle. The diversity in students shown and the personalized settings feed into the narrative of technology and education as the land of equal opportunity. The commercial is set outside of the classroom, away from the computer and far from the ivory towers of elite universities. This is education for everyone, every where with gratitude being given wholly to technology. The metaphor of freedom is deeply ingrained in this commercial’s visual and textual settings. The students shown here are not bogged down by heavy textbooks, locked in a classroom or tied to a computer desk, they are in the airport, playing with children, jogging and generally enjoying life away from the classroom. The laptop is the premier technology featured in the commercial, but still a minimally used visual. In the two scenes using this technology, we see two men, one an army soldier using his laptop presumably to do homework in an airport terminal and the other man using his laptop in a darkly lit kitchen in his home. The text accompanying these images, respectively “University of boundaries are nothing” and “University of class is in session when I so choose” seek to establish the most attractive and prevailing metaphors of technology and education. Online education equals freedom and the introduction of online technology into higher education opens the user to new worlds where physical boundaries and restraints are non-existent. For textual and visual contexts, technology and namely technology in higher education empowers students to determine their own path to education.
The combination of these visual and textual components with the established narratives and developing metaphors all lend to the ideal the online higher education is a progressive form of education, one that is inclusive, enlightening, empowering and liberating for the consumer.
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