ABSTRACT
T his chapter looks at advertising in a specialist product sector: university institutions.This area of advertising is significant because of the nature of the ‘product’ beingadvertised. In the UK, the complexity of the sector is partly a consequence of government-driven shifts in the management and provision of higher education and related changes in its consumption. Since the 1990s, universities have begun to advertise far more frequently. Simultaneously various changes in the composition of the higher education ‘market’ and significant changes in the ways university education is funded have made marketing and advertising appear to be more compatible with ‘The Idea of a University’1
than was the case in former times. Advertising made no sense when demand for higher education places typically outstripped supply and when universities and polytechnics were entirely publicly funded – as a limited public resource – by local authorities and central government.
