Bye Bye Ohio Poly Tech

[gozips19]

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/05/university_of_akron_drops_ohio.html

[K92]

Why would the braintrust abandon such a brilliant idea?

[Captain Kangaroo]

The back pedaling continues...

 

[ZippyRulz]

I recommend clicking the link to the Akron Ohio Student Association facebook summary of their meeting with Pavloff. Athletics spending/student fees was not mentioned but among their grievances is a concern that Aramark profits via the "prison industrial complex"...never saw that one coming.

 

Edited May 20, 2016 by ZippyRulz

[ZachTheZip]

2 hours ago, ZippyRulz said:

I recommend clicking the link to the Akron Ohio Student Association facebook summary of their meeting with Pavloff. Athletics spending/student fees was not mentioned but among their grievances is a concern that Aramark profits via the "prison industrial complex"...never saw that one coming.

 

 

Aramark is a fairly controversial company, and Akron switched to them just as their reported controversies were reaching a peak.

 

However, my biggest beef with them making the switch is that they stopped inviting food trucks on campus. If you worked near campus or downtown they were a quick walk or drive to get some different food options from the fairly limited regular downtown fare.

[LZIp]

Agree or disagree with it, to me, ditching the Poly Tech campaign approx. a year into it is even dumber than the campaign to begin with. All those wasted advertising $ with an already cash-strapped University isn't a good look. I probably would have went to the grave pushing it if I were him.

[LosAngelesZipFan]

It is the definition of dumb-assery.   If there was any doubt about the haphazard, ill-considered, tone-deaf stupidity of all that has transpired the last 24 months, this should be the final confirmation.   Besides wasting money at a time of supposed grave financial crisis, it just makes the whole U look stupid and amateurish.  Sure will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of years-- if enrollment craters, it will precipitate a true financial crisis.   And that would open the door on a state takeover.   And that would lead to a consolidation that is not over our choosing or control, like the CSU merger talk of 5 or 6 years ago.  

The idea of shaping UA around a polytech is sound, I think-- it's actually very consistent with UA's history.   It's not a stretch.   The problem is that the term "polytech" doesn't mean anything to most people and for those that do have an impression, it is more akin to "trade school" than "technical institute with a practical/career-minded bent".  

So stipulated:  it should never have been launched this way.   But, now that it has, now that Scar and co. have been attaching the U to this for the last year and a half as the future and saving path, you can't just walk away from it.   Instead, shift to translating "polytech" into terms that make sense to the consumer.  Instead of saying "we got some pushback on our plan to rename the university, after being here for all of a cup of coffee, and when faced with that, we pretended that we had no intention of renaming but instead are re-positioning...well, not even really re-positioning, we are really just re-branding... well, not even that, it's just a tagline, really just a smudgy squiggle of meaningless words that someone stuck on there under the logo, just ignore it and pretend it never happened", they could be saying "we do constant tracking of consumer sentiment and have been paying particular attention to the saliency of the term polytechnic because that is really what we were hoping would take root.  It hasn't, in part because Ohio doesn't have any heritage of this unlike California or Georgia or, well, France.  So, we know now we need to go past the term to actually explaining it."   

Hence new tagline options:  The University of Akron:  We Really Really Don't Know What the f We Are Doing  or The University of Akron:  Somehow Making Kent Look Like a Well-Run Institution or The University of Akron:  JesusChristMonkeyBalls We Have GOT to Get Our S*** Together.

 

Edited May 22, 2016 by LosAngelesZipFan

[LosAngelesZipFan]

And for what it's worth, I am happy to see jesuschristmonkeyballs get through the profanity filter.  That made my day.