Supporting the notion that intercollegiate athletics is integral to the educational mission, the NCAA is backing a national organization’s campaign to make higher education a public policy priority.

The American Council on Education last month launched an aggressive push to “brand” higher education in the face of lagging governmental funding for colleges and universities. The NCAA offered several time slots during March Madness for ACE to promote the campaign through public service announcements demonstrating the practical benefits higher education provides all citizens, not just those who attend college.

ACE Senior Vice President Terry Hartle said more than 400 colleges and universities already have joined the campaign.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see the number of campuses that have embraced this campaign — but we had strong indications early on that would be the case, as we’d been hearing from more and more presidents and chancellors in recent years that higher education had to be more active with the American public,” Hartle said.

Hartle said the campaign has attracted a broad cross section of institutions that includes both two- and four-year, public and private colleges and universities. Such diversity of institutions involved in the campaign, Hartle said, helps make the case with Americans that the higher education system is flexible enough to meet the complex challenges facing the nation.

“The goal of the initiative is to enhance public understanding of the ways that instruction, research and innovation undertaken by colleges and universities helps prepare the nation for the future,” he said. “It’s no secret that those who go to college usually have higher incomes and better jobs than those who do not attend — the public intuitively understands this. But there is a broad set of public or social benefits provided by higher education as well.”

Hartle said those include research that fosters innovation and problem solving, workforce training that helps the country meet the challenges of the global economy and a learning environment that prepares citizens to participate in a democracy.

The campaign is much more than just a way to generate funding. Hartle said American higher education will not be able to do the job that the country wants and needs without strong, consistent public support for the teaching, research and innovation higher education provides.

“We have learned in our research over the last year that when these broader benefits are mentioned and described, the public quickly and vigorously endorses them,” Hartle said. “But the public doesn’t always recognize these outcomes as fast or as clearly as we would like.”

The advertising campaign uses humor to make the point. In one of the television ads, for example, an overnight mail delivery company attempts to entice a pigeon to “air mail” a package. In another, a couple being burgled is told by a 911 operator to resort to impractical tactics because cuts to community colleges have produced a shortage of emergency responders. The voiceover walkout to the ads is: “America’s colleges and universities — we teach people who solve the problems and change the world.”

Those ads ran several times during the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships, time slots that otherwise would have cost ACE millions of dollars.

“We could never afford that sort of visibility if not for the NCAA,” Hartle said. “The NCAA has worked extremely hard to demonstrate that athletics is but a part of the wider academic enterprise of colleges and universities, that the teamwork and dedicated participation by college athletes at all levels only enhances their learning and their contribution to the campus community. And so in many ways it comes as no surprise that the NCAA would be such a dedicated partner to the campaign.”

NCAA President Myles Brand said it was worth it.

“Because intercollegiate athletics is wholly embedded in the university and shares its mission, goals and values, it is appropriate for the governing body of intercollegiate athletics — the NCAA — to support the ACE campaign,” Brand said.

“For the individual, higher education is the means to a happy, productive life. That is an outcome worthy of sustaining in itself. Certainly, an educated populace is the key to making democracy work. Without the enlightened and broadened perspective that education provides, liberties may become the property of only the powerful and freedom the right of only the elite. Each of us must understand the heritage we have received through accessible education.”

Hartle said he’s received hundreds of requests to make use of the TV public service announcements. Institutions also have been interested in reprints from print ads that have run in publications such as The Wall Street Journal.

Hartle also said the campaign’s Web site (www.SolutionsForOurFuture.org) is generating about 3,000 unique visitors each day. 

“People are signing up to be part of our newsletter list, and each day we’re hearing from new campuses that want to become involved and integrate the Solutions message into their annual community outreach plans,” he said. “We’re extremely excited at what we’ve started, and are looking forward to a productive year ahead. We only see new partnerships and new avenues for communication in the coming months.”