Not sold on PR

Why do universities skimp on public relations, asks David Walker, when it can give them a vital edge?

When news is bad, shoot the messenger. Does the old adage perhaps explain what has been happening in the universities as they struggle with the effects of a less than munificent Budget settlement? The function variously called media or external relations, marketing, development and communications is in ferment, with job cuts here and regradings there and a general sense of being unloved.

Take University College, London. Here is a premier-league player - a heap of good news stories just longing to be disseminated, you might think. Last week UCL advertised for a new head of media relations, which ought surely to rank as a vital job.

But the salary on offer was a simian pounds 25,000, peanuts compared with what private sector media specialists can expect and what other public and voluntary sector organisations pay. It is the same payment as Thurrock Council's senior media officer gets, and several thousand less than the Church Mission Society is willing to pay its media person.

"Turmoil" is how David Roberts, of the Higher Education Information and Services Trust (Heist), describes the state of university marketing and public relations. "The leaders of some institutions are using the excuse of financial pressure to cut something they did not believe in in the first place," he says.

Cambridge, which did not have a press office at all until 1990, is reviewing its external relations staff, who answer to its development office. (Its press officer, Susie Thomas, gets more, "but not much more", than pounds 25,000). Strangely, in a world where keeping in contact with former students must be good business, several places are cutting down on their work with alumni. Liverpool John Moores and Sheffield Universities have recently closed down such offices. Leeds has recently reorganised its entire external relations work; Brighton, too. Manchester University has replaced its director of external relations at a lower grade.

Christine Hodgson, of the University of East London, is the current chair of the Higher Education External Relations Association. She talks about "increasing concern at the apparent downgrading by some institutions of external relations - it is still regarded as a bolt-on luxury."

Roger Grinyer, director of information for the Higher Education Funding Council for England and a former press officer for the University of Lancaster, talks of "fragmentation" and the danger that institutions may not be thinking about their communications with the wider world in a strategic way that links with their general plans for development.

A core problem, according to David Roberts, of Heist, is that universities have yet to take on the message that marketing matters. "Good public relations cannot make a badly performing organisation better, but they can play a key part in making a good organisation more effective." According to Heist surveys, university PR directors are not badly paid - the average is some pounds 35,000 a year, which puts them on a par with professors and not much below what the private sector pays comparable people.

Across higher education there is tremendous variation in the degree of seniority enjoyed by offices doing external relations, and in how far they enjoy the confidence of vice-chancellors.

Journalists tend to be critical, complaining about slackness in returning calls and sending promised faxes - and, far more serious, woeful ignorance about what is happening inside their own institutions. But that, if true, may have to do with the way in which academics regard the PR function.

In general the newer universities tend to have invested more in marketing - the mobile phone count is higher there, to be sure - but it is in the older universities you tend to find information directors who, perhaps because of their longevity, carry considerable weight.

Ray Footman at the University of Edinburgh, formerly press officer for the Committee of Vice-Chancellors, is a senior figure who has seen several principals come and go. Similarly, Frank Albrighton at the University of Birmingham. "What I try to do is think of the university's mission and the reputation it wants to attract, then try to deploy techniques to achieve that. Media relations are part of that, as are publications and public relations in the fund-raising sense as well.

"Corporate communications, as understood in the private sector, have always been a bit controversial in universities. The danger is, when there is retrenchment it is perceived as an add-on to the central activities of teaching and research."

At UCL, deputy development director Christine Greenaway denies that the apparent downgrading of media relations says anything about her college's enthusiasm to engage with the wider world - it is rather that "development" (raising money) is now the focus. She says UCL's head of corporate communications, Nicholas Tyndale, has direct and continuous access to the provost, Derek Roberts. UCL, she says, has a mailing list of 600 journalists, including many specialists who are important communicators in the technology and medical areas dear to UCL's heart. Besides, if an outstanding candidate comes along for the media relations job, more money may be found.

Oxford's director of information is the former Times Higher journalist Paul Flather, whose possession of a PhD insulates him from the condescension academics sometimes show to their administrative colleagues. At Oxford fundraising is a separate function, in which the university has been remarkably successful. Mr Flather's principal task is to promote a university with a lot to shout about and, he notes, being constantly on the qui vive to rebut negative commentary, like the person writing in the Los Angeles Times saying Oxford was no longer in the world's top 10. To Flather answer three press officers, at least one of whom is paid at the level UCL is offering for its head of media relations.

"I think in a world where the frontiers of knowledge are moving so quickly you have to be aware of your profile, even in Oxford and Cambridge, which means you have got to have an active external relations function," he says

David Roberts, of Heist, agrees. What is happening to external relations can only be a blip on an upwards curve, he suggests. As universities compete more, one with another, for grants and students, their awareness of marketing and their press relations will have to expand - and they will eventually have to pay their PR specialists more