Students find schools and money on the Web

Searching for schools and scholarships might get easier for students with two Web sites designed to help them with these tasks.

Interactive College and University Videos allows students to view a collection of promotional videotapes from colleges and universities on the Web. The service is free both to users and to institutions; company president Thomas Steyaert hopes to make a profit eventually from corporate sponsorship and advertisements. Students' computers must have Real Player installed (Real Player can be downloaded for free), and a fairly fast Web connection is advisable for smooth viewing.

Fastweb.com also allows students to search for colleges and universities at no cost, but the company provides links to institutions' home pages instead of promotional videos. Fastweb's main claim to fame is its comprehensive database of scholarship information. After creating personal profiles, students can search for scholarships appropriate to their situations. The site also offers articles and advice. Interested students can opt to receive promotional materials from the on-- line company,s marketing partner; otherwise, the site is ad free.

Universities Contribute To For-Profit Web Site

Several universities have joined with prominent cultural and research organizations to form Fathom, a forprofit Web company that bills itself as an "interactive knowledge site." Not yet operational, the site will be run by a consortium including Columbia University, the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, and other prestigious institutions.

Fathom will offer articles, images, discussion forums, and interviews on scholarly topics, all free to users. The site's creators plan to link articles and other items creatively, so users can explore subjects through collections of pages from different disciplines and even different media. A user interested in the 1930s, for example, might be able to access fiction, history, photographs, and songs from the decade in the same place.

Educators Campaign Against Drinking

Educators interested in decreasing alcohol and other drug use on campus might want to check out a new site launched by the U.S. Department of Education. The Web site is dedicated to facilitating the use of 11 social norms marketing" to discourage the idea that excessive drinking is a classic and widespread campus behavior. If students believe that it is normal not to drink excessively, the reasoning goes, they will be more likely to refrain from doing so themselves. On the other hand, if students believe that "everybody" drinks heavily, they will be more likely to do the same.

Strategies used by social norms marketing to catch students' attention include advertisements in campus media, small-group presentations, mailings, publication of student handbooks, and creation of Web sites, T-shirts, or posters. The Department of Education's Web site features research supporting the use of social norms marketing, links to resources, and descriptions of campus initiatives.

Copyright American Association of University Professors Nov/Dec 2000
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