How New FTC Regulations Are Fining For-Profit Universities For Misleading Advertisements

Everyone knows advertisements are to show the best parts of your business. If we correlate that to the higher education system, you’d consider yourself in the business of maintaining student enrollments and expanding your bottom line. While showing students the best parts of your university through marketing and PR is a typical method, the problem the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now reporting a bad trend of for-profit schools over-exaggerating their student success post-graduation.

Between 2018 and 2020, the FTC reported these types of misleading or overblown claims in education surged nearly 70 percent. The striking similarity these institutions recently sent Notice of Penalty Offenses in October 2021 had campaigns centered around the message that “a typical student of ours can almost certainly be guaranteed a higher salary, a job and a successful career *if* you attend our school.” Of course, say these promises enough times and you beg the question “where are these statistics coming from?”

This is where the secondary screenings came in to start the verification process for higher education institutions and each of these claims. The FTC’s notice states that the commission will keep a watchful eye on the claims from those institutions make by comparing and contrasting the true post-graduate career outcomes, the demand of that field, the running tally, and percentage of graduates who actually receive jobs in their desired field if the school actually provides any assistance in helping the graduate get to those job opportunities, the total salary a recent graduate may expect and other related practices. The punishment if those unfair or deceptive practices are found will boast a hefty fine of up to $43,792 per violation.

Now that you know what the implications are when assisting with misleading communications about your institution’s success, you can outline what to do to avoid these issues.

How to market your university correctly:

Sheer data transparency

In the digital marketing age, transparency is key. If you fail to do so, your prompt students (and statisticians from the FTC) to do their own background checks on you and not only uncover but also, exploit your false claims. Whether a sheer mistake or purposefully, as an institution, coming back from civil penalties and legal documentation with fraud over it leaves a massive credibility blemish on your school’s record.

The rule of thumb is to not promise what you don’t know. As a marketer in the higher education industry, it’s your job to fact-check and regularly assess claims and campaigns you want to push. By doing this step, your quantitative data can actually become an asset to back up your claims and earn you street credit for being so transparent, winning over prospective students, families, and the FTC alike.

Students will be attracted to the numbers and data you do by sharing your institution’s real-time goals, you can loop them in on what you’re doing well and what you strive to change.
If there is some data that you find on the less-than-spectacular side, you know this is where your university can actually improve. Quantitative data matters and treating these numbers like a long-form campaign will take your university’s next ads and qualitative remarks on your that much stronger.

Refocusing your campaign claims

Higher education is a massive umbrella of schools and programs so it can be easy to miss the countless accomplishments set daily by your own intuition if you don’t zoom in. If you don’t have the exact numbers set those statistics on your university are still being calculated, given at a certain timeframe, etc. there’s no need to exaggerate or guess.

Focus on your successes. The longer we work somewhere, the easier it is to gloss over your own company’s value because you’ve become less sensitized to it. Stay in the know and focus on your institution’s unique value propositions (UVPs) for students. When you can emphasize the milestones, certain programs have made, student accomplishments, and how can they access opportunities for success based on 1st party data you do have, work with it.

Start with internal checks and balances to follow through with the success rates of these programs. By actively fact-checking and staying updated through your community, you set an initiative to assess future promotions under a systematic process of approval. Do this and you’ll win prospects over for your positive accountability/commitment to your students and championing your unique programs.

Contact Investis Digital

Ready to showcase your digital narrative through great advertisements (without the legal trouble)? Learn more about our Performance Marketing Solutions or contact us, here.