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By Santiago Giraldo Every semester The Pananole tries to publish at least two online issues with articles discussing FSU Panama related matters or just anything that might interest the student body attending the university. To do this, meetings are usually called to discuss with the potential writers the articles they are thinking about writing, and although it is difficult to get people interested in doing this, a few persons always show up and we get to publish something good. Lately, however, it’s been getting a little bit more difficult. For last semester’s second issue, only three people were present in the meeting, and for this semester’s first issue, only two people showed up. This makes it kind of difficult to get anything good done, but luckily this situation gave Professor Murphy and me something to talk about, and we decided that a good antidote for the lack of articles would be to write an article trying to answer why that’s happening. The first reason why there are not many students who want to write an article for the student newspaper—or get involved in any extracurricular activity, for that matter— is that there are not that many students at all. As always in summer semesters, enrollment goes down quite a bit because many students go for a summer break, choose to do an internship, work, etc. However, it turns out that the total number of students on campus for this semester is the lowest in the last ten years. It would be naïve to say this is or is going to become a downward trend in enrollment figures, but it is still a matter worth looking at carefully. Probably the question that is worth answering is not why our enrollment is low, but rather, Why couldn’t it be bigger? Dr. Raymond A. George, the Director of Student Affairs at FSU Panama and also a professor at the university, has been working now for 10 years with the university and has a lot of experience and knowledge regarding FSU’s situation in Panama’s university scene. There are several reasons, he says, why FSU can’t penetrate deeper into the Panamanian market. First of all, the market is not at all an easy one, as there are already about 35 other universities trying to attract students, and new ones are constantly appearing. However, we cannot compete on the same level with all those universities. Let’s remember that we are a branch of the main FSU campus in Tallahassee, and this gives us the difficult task of offering the quality of an American university with much lower prices. That means that the university has to offer all of its programs in English in a Spanish-speaking country, which not only limits the amount of students that can study here, but also the professors that can teach for us. Second, our tuition, although significantly lower than that of a university in a U.S. campus, is much higher than the normal rates universities in Panama usually charge. Third, and probably most important, we only offer 6 degrees that can be completed in Panama. The rest of them need to be completed either at the main campus or at some other American institution, and this is certainly something that dissuades many students from studying here, or parents from sending their kids to FSU because of the high cost of living in the States. For Dr. George, this is the biggest obstacle preventing us from attracting a higher number of students. There are certainly many programs that the faculty here would love to offer for students to finish in Panama, but it is just not possible. One of those programs, which would certainly be very popular, is a Business degree but as Dr. Murphy notes, the Business school on the main campus will not allow us to offer such a program here because of quality control concerns. Again, these are situations that arise from our condition as a branch of the main campus. Why, then, do we comply with all of these conditions if they limit our participation in the Panamanian market so much? Simply, being a branch of FSU Tallahassee confers on us a level of specialization and prestige that most Panamanian universities don’t have. This condition does not allow us to appeal to the greater part of the Panamanian market, but it gives us a great comparative advantage in appealing to a small group of customers in that market. That small group consists of those parents and students who value the quality of a U.S. education but are not capable of assuming the full costs it implies right out from the start, or just don’t feel their kids are ready to assume all of the responsibilities of living on their own right after graduating from high school. In appealing to this type of customers, it turns out, we are highly qualified. Professor Joseph Dziver, head of English Language Program, lists several reasons why FSU is much better off than other institutions in Panama with similar offers. First of all, we offer students the freedom to choose their classes, choose their course load, and allow them to carry on themselves the responsibility of fulfilling their major requirements well and on time. Second, we have a real university campus with lots of facilities, whereas other universities are just located in office buildings, which takes away much of the university life feeling. Third, we offer students who maintain a good GPA a scholarship when transferring to Tallahassee that allows them to pay as Florida residents. Also, as Professor George notes, accreditation by SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) gives our courses official American level status. What, then, can be done to attract a greater amount of students? Since we don’t have much freedom regarding the parameters to which the university has to stick, it seems the only option we have left is selling the university as it is, and this is best done through advertising. We need to find a way to communicate to our target market, and once we do, show them why our pros outweigh our downsides. For Professor Dziver, that is precisely our problem: We are not making our strengths known. Actually, since one of Professor Dziver’s tasks is marketing the ELP, of which he is the director, he has often assisted with the marketing of the university as a whole. In fact, due to an exchange of services that took place between the ELP and SERTV, we seem to be on the way to film a TV ad about FSU. The ad will feature real FSU students talking about their experience at the university and what made them come here (those interested in participating can talk directly to Professor Dziver). Besides the TV ad, we will also have our next Open House on July, which is also a big part of marketing the university. The objective of the Open House is inviting prospective students and parents to come to the university and find out who we are and what we offer. Those present will receive a tour of the university and will be showed a virtual presentation. They will also have the chance to meet actual students, will be offered refreshments and receive promotional items. This year, the Open House’s banner will be: “Committed to Your Future”. These are not the only things that are being done. As Dr. George notes, we are constantly visiting schools in Panama, going to college fairs and inviting schools to make tours of the university. Besides that, he says, we are also playing in the international scene by constantly making visits to other countries. As we can see, there are indeed many things being done to market the university and get the word out about what we have to offer. However, it seems that we still haven’t completely recognized just how important publicity is for our survival and expansion—it is basically the only tool we have to work with. Most large institutions have a whole office devoted to publicizing the university, something we certainly don’t have and is probably beyond our means. But we should have, at the very least, a full time position in our staff devoted solely to marketing if we really want to get serious about advertising the university and getting more students. Our capacity to do this will, in the end, be what determines if we can not only maintain our current standards but also continue to evolve and raise the bar a little further. As Professor Dziver says, many of our problems are circular. “If we had a bigger building, we could accommodate more students; but we would need more students to get a bigger building”. We need to tackle our problems with tactics that do not imply drastically changing any of the university’s essential features, and advertising seems the way to go about it. BMW is one of the most respected luxury cars manufacturers in the auto industry, and owning a model of the brand is certainly the dream of many ambitious ones. However, if we analyze the numbers, we would probably find out that BMW’s revenues are greatly outweighed by those of, say, Toyota. Now, BMW could compete with Toyota by producing low-cost cars and probably increase its revenues greatly—but it would lose the prestige that goes along with the brand. In our case, it seems like we are trying to be BMW and not Toyota. FSU Panama could, if it wanted to embrace a much bigger potential market, increase the number of degrees offered, offer programs in Spanish and lower its tuition fees among many other things, but it would probably cease to be called FSU. So, what does BMW do to get people to buy their cars? Simply, they spend enormous amounts of money in advertising. They make TV ads with their cars in idyllic locations; make celebrities drive their automobiles; design cars that can speed from 0 to 60 mph in a few seconds and brag about it a lot, etc. In short, they go through a lot of trouble to convince people that it’s worth shelling out the extra cash to be among the privileged few to own a BMW. If we, then, really want to be BMW and not Toyota, we better start acting like it.
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