SMUG Tuition and Financial Aid

At the risk of seriously undermining the incentive for potential participants in the design-the-logo contest for Social Media University, Global (which offered at 50 percent tuition discount to the winner), I want to clarify two important points:

  1. SMUG students are not eligible for any state or federal financial aid programs to assist with their tuition payments, because
  2. Tuition and fees for SMUG are $34,998 less than those for Harvard.

In other words, SMUG tuition is Free. You are responsible for your own room & board, though.

Still, even though we receive no federal funds, SMUG does not discriminate based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion or any other factor. We are fully Title IX compliant, with opportunities to play open to both women and men.

Many prominent organizations advocate Universal Basic and Secondary Education, and other programs like One Laptop Per Child are aimed at giving youngsters in developing countries access to technology. SMUG’s focus is different: we offer free, universal post-secondary education in social media not primarily to kids, but to the non-traditional student; the lifetime learner.

Yet hopefully the curriculum will be valuable even to the digital natives who’ve grown up with this stuff, because it offers a more structured framework for understanding. They may even find out that what they’ve learned about social media will be valuable to potential employers who are looking for more effective ways to engage key stakeholders, because they will see practical examples of social media being used to meet real business goals.

SMUG is no “Ivory Tower” institution for pointy-headed intellectuals. You’ll get hands-on, real-world experience in social media…with no student loans to repay.

I’m looking for stories of people who’ve used blogging or other social media to generate bottom-line business results. I’d like to profile you in a future post, or even have you be an adjunct faculty member. Leave a comment below, or send me an email in Gmail (see address in the upper right) or a message in Facebook.

Why SMUG?

social media university global

So how do you choose what to name a new institution of higher learning?

  • Stanford University was named after a former California governor’s son, who had died of typhoid fever at age 15.
  • Yale University, which was founded to train ministers and was called Collegiate School, was eventually named after benefactor Elihu Yale.
  • Harvard University likewise was named after an early benefactor.

When choosing a name for a new on-line University providing social media education, I didn’t have any benefactors to consider. (Not that I’d be above selling the naming rights!) Social Media University, Global was the first name that popped into my head. But I did a little brainstorming and identified some other options, including:

  1. Social Media University – Technical (SMUT)
  2. Social Network Institute of Practical Education (SNIPE)
  3. Public Relations Institute for Social Media (PRISM)

The first one’s an obvious non-starter, and though the second reflects the hands-on nature of the proposed curriculum, somehow the acronym doesn’t quite fit. And while social media definitely have public relations applications, the third name’s focus on PR is too narrow.

friendmap.jpg

SMUG seems to fit because the curriculum will be covering social media in all its varieties, from blogs to social networking sites to microblogging to YouTube and everything in between. And seeing as I’ve made friends in Facebook from across the U.S. and as far away as Singapore, Egypt, Australia, Norway, Panama and Thailand (and that it is a world-wide web), the “Global” part isn’t an overstatement, either.

I’m open to other suggestions: it’s not like I’ve printed a bunch of letterhead or put a lot of work into the school logo. And considering that SMUG was established about 15 hours ago, we don’t have an entrenched history to overcome. Renaming wouldn’t be a problem.

But meanwhile, if anyone has an artistic bent and would like to design an official SMUG seal, I’d love to see what you can do. I’m thinking something like an old English crest or a round seal would be neat, with the following text elements and suitable graphics:

Social Media University — Global   *   SMUG   *   Established 2008

Whoever designs the winning logo gets a 50 percent tuition discount.  Then again, 50 percent of free is…