Welcome to the University of Spamford

Not all Business Schools are alike. For every Critical Management inquiring programme, there's a shonky institution dedicated to handing out gold stars to every get-rich-quick chancer who hands over their credit card. That's why mainstream economics departments entirely failed to spot the crash: they were essentially lending a patina of respectability to what amounts to alchemy, and hoping to make a few quid from 'consultancy' along the way.

So far, so normal. But when universities join the ranks of business's bottom-feeders, you've got to worry. I got an email today which looked like the kind of spivvy-spam that we all get every day.

Executive Courses from the University of Salford

Not being an executive (or a leader), I assumed that is was a phishing exercise, especially as the reply email address looked, well, phishy:

Salford.Professional.Development.Ltd@dotmailer-email.com 

Not a standard .ac.uk UK university address, but one generated by a mass-mailing organisation.

So what 'Executive Courses' were on offer? I was hoping for 'executive relief' (at 29.00), but sadly that was off the menu.

Ooh, look at those logos. I know that the Institute of Directors is a legitimate organisation (legal anyway: its economic and ideological positions are far from legitimate). I've never heard of The Pacific Institute (though its webpage and twitter feed look like what we call 'a load of old bollocks'), and I know that Salford University brutally slaughtered its humanities courses to pay – presumably – for this kind of rubbish. 

I've a short fuse when it comes to spam at the best of times. When it comes to universities, I tend to think that Business Schools should be (in a colleague's formulation) 'about business, not for business'.  These courses look pretty weak: the kind of rubbish institutions with little class use to generate a quick buck, but the use of spamming as a recruitment tool really makes me worry. Surely this couldn't be true? 

So I looked up the Executive Leadership Programme, carefully not following links on the email in case it led me to some Internet Oubliette in which I'd be stripped of money, credit and reputation. Lo and behold: it's real! For only £1499 I could learn all about Leading Through Change,  or Potential To Performance. See how many Bullshit Bingo words you can tick off in the course synopsis:

People are the cornerstone of organisational success, and Investment in Excellence® develops this most valuable asset. It is a powerful development experience that enables leaders to achieve much more of their potential by changing their perception of what is possible, and then providing the skills, knowledge and application to cause a change in what they actually accomplish.
This module comprises of the development of personal transformational skills to equip participants to address limiting behaviours, empower self and others to set and achieve consistently high goals, and to release untapped potential.
The starting point of this element is that performance is driven by behaviours which in turn are driven by beliefs. In order for leader-driven collective improvements in performance to happen, there needs to be time built in for them to work on their own beliefs and behaviours.  This is an essential stage in enabling them to become more personally effective and thereby creating the constructive cultures that enhance the performance of others. The learning process links back to, and builds on, the first module and the impact of the individual on organisational culture as a whole.

But don't worry. It's a University! There must be a core of solid research informing all this. What's 'Facilitator' Lynne Oliver published? Well, nothing as such but she did work closely with Rabobank of the Netherlands. And what a great job she did with their leadership:

Rabobank boss quits over £662m Libor rigging fine

But I was still curious. Was this real? How did they get my name? Surely a reputable university wouldn't be simply spamming people? So I emailed the Salford Executive Leadership Programme's contact address to ask if the email was genuine.

Hello.
Could you confirm that this is a genuine message, and that I subscribed to your mailing list?
Yours, Plashing Vole

Back came a reply from Paul Bolton (not that he signed the email, but that's the name in the 'from' box':

Thanks for your email, this is a genuine email to your work email address. We have now removed you from our database. Thank you 

Not, you notice, an answer to the second question. So is a reputable university simply spamming? Or is it buying mailing lists from other organisations with a relaxed attitude to data protection. Last week I was on a course about Leadership in Higher Education. Surely the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education isn't flogging its mailing lists? I surely hope not. I've mailed Salford and the LFHE to ask.

I quickly got a reply from Paul.

As far as I am aware you did not subscribe, however we buy data from a reputable company and your email would have come from this. By law, we are permitted to email on a business to business basis, so long as we offer an opt out facility on the email.

I can see that the email did go to a non-personal email address and we did offer the unsubscribe option. I would however like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

He's wrong about the address, of course: it's my name followed by my institutional domain. I'm even less impressed by his defence: 'it's legal' and I can unsubscribe from something to which I didn't voluntarily subscribe in the first place. Wow. So many things are legal, without being reputable, effective or polite.

Why does this bother me? Because universities should be better than this. They should be better than striking brand-name deals with flaky organisations and they should know better than to besmirch their reputations by indulging in bottom-feeder behaviour like spamming. If this is the kind of thing they teach on their courses, you should save your money.

Stay classy, Salford!

Update: ironically, Salford's SPD unit also offers an Introduction to Digital Marketing for Higher Education including:

• Considerations for establishing a Digital and Social Media Policy

• Knowing Your Audience/Market

• The importance of Customer Relationship Marketing

On this evidence, I'd be awarding a fail. 

Non-sequitur Friday conundrum

Two slogans have caught my eye this morning.

1. Love Music, Hate Racism.
2. Violence to children must stop. Full stop.

I must confess to not feeling any less racist or violent towards children having absorbed these messages. I don't hit children or hate people based on their race anyway. But I have developed an irrational and violent hatred of sloganeers.

Who on earth came up with the idea that there's something inherently contradictory about loving music and being racist? Certainly not a Wagner fan, the Macc Lads, Skrewdriver, or the man who told me that I should listen to Bruckner because 'the Fuhrer' played his music after dinner every evening. Plenty of people love music and racism, sadly. I'm sure there are lots who hate both. Or are indifferent to one, the other or both. Let's try a commutation test. Does 'Love Racism, Hate Music' make any sense? Of course not. Music and racism are apples and wardrobes - there's no logic in the opposition here at all.

As for the NSPCC slogan - why? I cannot believe that anyone inclined to abuse children will have spotted the poster and decided to call it a day. Nor do I think that anyone disposed to prevent cruelty to children will have redoubled their efforts. It's such an empty phrase, akin to New Labour's verb-free slogans like 'A brighter tomorrow'. Fine, but let's have some details.

Have you got pet phrases which annoy you? Use the comments section.

New logo reflects the student experience

Here's my suggestion for our 'rebranding'. Can you guess the inspiration?

!Whatthefuck?

Occasionally, we're all faced with periods of introspection. Our lives seem worthless, our activities pointless, our presence a drag on our families, friends and colleagues.

I have the solution. Whenever you have a self-esteem crisis, open the website of !Whatif? They're an 'innovations' company. I've read their site and still don't know what they actually do (or even how to pronounce it). I have divined that they wear zany facial hair, combats, and revere Nathan Barley as some kind of god. They charge companies big fees for sounding like they know what's hip - that's as close as I can get. Their name makes me scream with impotent fury. It encapsulates a mindless kind of trendiness, covers utter intellectual bankruptcy. This is what we've done to this country. Honest people making things have been sacked. Bullshitters with no regard for the decencies of grammar run the world. How I hope the recession sends them back to the fields (or as in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, perhaps they'll be on the first ship to a new planet. We'll follow you, honestly).

There does seem to be a total loss of confidence in company names now too. British Telecom is now officially BP. Vesper Thorneycroft is now VT. The BBC's privatised engineering wing is Red Bee. British Airways is BA. British Petroleum is now BP. West Brom's failed art-gallery-and-whatever is 'The Public' and on and on - what's wrong with a name which says who you are, or what you do? Especially for the shameful industries - BAe (formerly British Aerospace) should be Shiny Weapons of Mass Destruction No Questions Asked, Bribes Available.

I'm so lonely

I wrote to our Marketing Director on April 9th, asking how he could justify paying some very expensive consultants for internal 'rebranding' ('' because it's not a real word) while the university struggles to make massive cutbacks.

Have I had the courtesy of a reply? Of course not. So I institute the Communications Countdown. I make it 23 days so far. If it gets to 50 days, I'll start using his actual name.