The economics and business departments inside colleges and universities have an opportunity to do what America’s resource-starved newsrooms cannot. They can give middle- and working-class families objective, useful, easy-to-understand information and guidance on how to maneuver through this period of painful economic disruption.
Nothing like the current inflationary recession has plagued the U.S. for two generations. That leaves most Americans lost and desperate when they hear wave after wave of bad economic news.
At the same time, the demise of the news industry’s business model has left too many newsrooms staffed by skeleton crews. Economic coverage therefore ends up being geared toward high rolling investors or focused through partisan lenses for political junkies.
That leaves the Americans at greatest financial risk from a bad economy with few sources to go to for solid, unbiased, user-friendly information to help them weather the storm and plan for recovery.
All of which presents a genuine opportunity for universities to marshal their business and economics faculty members and students to help fill the void. It will take some effort and coordination, but there’s an opening to significantly help the public while building visibility and prestige for your institution.
You can drive the output through social media channels, your own websites and publications, or you can partner with news outlets to supply it directly to them for publication.
Here are the critical elements colleges and universities will need to successfully pull this off:
Enthusiastic participants
This isn’t academic publishing. What’s needed is analysis and interpretation that’s of the moment and digestible by Americans who need it most. Meaning it has the chance to be both fun and meaningful. Encourage your department heads to recruit a mix of faculty members and students who want to put their insights on display for real-world audiences that need their help. You could even involve your journalism departments to help make the output clearer and more digestible.
A tight focus
Don’t try to replace The Wall Street Journal or CNBC. Instead, think about the intersection of a particular slice of the population that needs better information with the strengths of your econ and business departments/schools. You might target your campus’s geographic region, or my favorite, specific underserved or disadvantaged demographics. You could create anything from a TikTok or YouTube channel, to an ongoing series of news contributions, to standardized indices designed to help the intended audience. And if your econ/business departments are deep on labor economics, environmental economics, entrepreneurialism, etc. – find your focus there.
A ringmaster
You’ll need a ringmaster for your economic show – someone who’s aware of the resources the university has on hand and how best to combine and deploy them. This could be a socially savvy department head, an eager PhD candidate, or a wired-in media information officer. What’s important is that the person likes the mission, understands the target audience, is enthusiastic and persuasive, and has contacts inside and outside the university to make this happen.
A sense of data-driven objectivity
This probably isn’t worth doing if it’s not driven by the idea of providing useful information without a political agenda. Plenty of ideologically-fueled polemics are already available on cable and the internet. Instead, consider grounding the effort in faculty/student research and data collection that has a chance of genuinely illuminating and helping targeted audiences. With so many Americans believing mainstream news outlets are a threat to democracy, let your institution stand for grounded, factual “news you can use.”
This program could be as modest – or as ambitious – as your resources can handle. But in a landscape where enrollments are dropping, there’s ongoing upset over soaring tuition and student debt, and the college rankings can’t be trusted, this kind of effort would be a great way to create goodwill and even drive equity.
And don’t forget to motivate, motivate, motivate. Show participants how they’re making a difference — don’t forget to send clippings or links around — and make them feel valued.
Done well, an economic information effort could be an excellent branding opportunity for almost any academic institution willing to bring it together.
Go find your ringmaster. Hone your goals. Round up your experts. Do well for your institution while doing good for others. Nothing uncertain about that.
More information on the decline in college enrollments can found here, from Best Colleges.
Dave Maney is Founder/CEO of The Expert Press and a regular contributor at Real Clear Markets and Fox Business News.