A recent tweet from Big Brother, er, Netflix, gave many subscribers pause. Whatever and however we watch the service, we seldom realize that "they" are watching us as well. The tweet, sent not by an individual but by Netflix US, said, "To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?"
I haven't seen the movie in question, but it's evidently a sappy Cinderella-ish story one critic described as having been copied and blended from "every Christmas movie from Hallmark/Lifetime/Ion/UPTv/TVOne and BET. This thing is almost a parody of a Hallmark Christmas movie." In other words, plenty of treacle, melodrama and improbable happy endings.
In the privacy of our homes, where binge-watching is now a thing, we don't really notice or care that something on the other side of our screen registers not only what we watch but how long we watch it, whether we ever finish and what our watching patterns are. And then someone looks at that data, interprets it and tells us what we might like next or speculates about our emotional condition. The Netflix text, clearly meant as a joke, cracked open our screen; someone is watching us as we watch it. (Read The Circle by Dave Eggers for an idea of what this might be like when everything is "seen" and where "Secrets are lies.")
Well, I hate to tell you, but colleges are doing the same thing in their never-ending search for ideal candidates who will not only fulfill their need for any number of student types but who will also attend if admitted. So add to being a good student the importance of knowing your online movements are being tracked with the same bloodhound determination the county sheriff uses to recapture escaped prisoners.
In his Atlantic article about how colleges use big data to assess their potential students, Jeff Selingo describes how Saint Louis University used it to radically expand and change the composition of its student body. Starting with the usual methods of looking at its most recent classes and analyzing responses from the questionnaires on the SAT and ACT, it constructed a picture of where it was and where it needed to go. After that, buying names that met certain criteria from the testing agencies cast a wide net, but even that seemed insufficient.
Ultimately, students' responses to survey questions were often inaccurate or missing. They often didn't know their parents' income, for example. And casting a wide net captured students who fit the desired criteria but didn't say much about the probability of their applying or attending if accepted.
Many years ago I worked briefly for a marketing agency whose clients included colleges and universities. The Internet was burgeoning, and colleges were developing their websites. One of our jobs was to steer potential students to those sites. But we also wanted to know how they got to them: Through the postcard we sent them? The email we used if we had it? An ad in a publication? To that end, we developed a unique web address for each medium that would tell us which method was most effective. That enabled institutions to shift their budgets appropriately and attempt to avoid John Wanamaker's problem: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."
Since then, the sophistication of this method has exploded. Selingo identifies a company called Capture Higher Ed that "tracks how prospective students use university websites." "Using a unique email link sent to prospective students or personal information they provide on a college’s website, Capture’s software can tell universities what web pages were visited, how often, and what prospective students did before and after."
"With that data," Selingo writes, "admissions can better understand the digital breadcrumbs students follow during the college search process, particularly what they do before they decide to apply or enroll. The data-mining enables schools to deliver personalized content on the web or send e-mails and texts to specific individuals..." So while you're traipsing merrily around a college's website, it's silently following you, noting where you land, how long you stay and what your interests are. It's like the old "Russian reversal" joke: ""Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watches you!" But what was once a joke is now literally true.
Older people find this trend alarming, whether it's coming from Netflix or Saint Louis University. The right to privacy is one of our highest principles. But young people are used to seeing ads geared to their browsing habits; they willingly give up information to get free stuff or join internet groups. (OK, I do too if I see a great bargain.) But it adds an extra layer of anxiety for prospective students: How much will their interaction with a college's website influence the college's own attention to an eventual application? And since this tracking is essentially invisible, you have no idea how it's used.
I often suggest that students interested in a college visit its website without necessarily having a plan for what to look at. Of course, if they have a major or program in mind they'd go there, but it's also important, especially when starting out, to see what catches the eye; the subconscious laws of attraction can reveal priorities helpful to developing priorities. So I wonder if now I should counsel students to make sure their site visits are more deliberate. (I don't think so, but there you go.)
College admission marketing has come a long way from the days of purchasing lists of prospective students who meet certain criteria. Now it can assess their behavior as well as their grades and testing. Like Netflix, colleges can tell who you are from what you watch. That may be overstating the case right now, but as the competition for students continues to heat up and as the uncertainty about enrollments gets more uncertain, you can bet those looking at you through your computer screen will know more and more about you, ultimately influencing their admission decisions. Maybe it's time to pay more attention to the man behind the curtain.
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