Universities Trashing Their Reputations with Glib Marketing

Recently I received an e-mail with the intriguing title of "eBook: 3 Australian Universities share the secret to online learning success". I was offered a "full eBook", but was disappointed to instead get just a thirteen page pamphlet, plugging a commercial conference. The three Australian universities lending their name to promotion have a track record of excellence in on-line education, but you wouldn't know it from this booklet. Instead you would think the institutions were only concerned with shallow short term feel good marketing to students. I suggest universities should avoid trashing the reputations they have built up over decades with glib marketing exercises.