Most universities like to claim that they help students learn how to think. But not Featherstone University. It discourages it, because “tradition, after all, is too important to tamper with.” At Featherstone University — indelicately abbreviated F.U. — students learn that the secret to future success is “surrounding yourself with people who pronounce ‘Versailles’ correctly.”
If that sounds unreal, it’s because it is. Featherstone University is a new advertisement created by Colorado Mesa University (a public university in Grand Junction, Colorado) meant to satirize elite colleges and the outsized role that wealth and privilege can play in higher education. The goal of CMU’s marketing campaign is to emphasize its own priorities like making sure that a college education remains affordable and accessible, develops critical thinking skills, and prepares students for productive lives.
Featherstone’s admission criteria are ever so special. It views enrollment as “a ceremony reaffirming that you were always meant to be here. Think of its requirements not so much as” hurdles,” but “filters” that ensure only the elite pass through.
Among those filters: applicants must submit a family tree that’s been illustrated by a noteworthy watercolorist; they must have at least one oil painting of a direct ancestor hanging in a manor, yacht club or private island residence; they must know which polo mallet should be used for each season, and they must prove they can recite a sonnet while performing equestrian dressage.
Critical thinking is not emphasized because Featherstone wants its students to uphold the same beliefs their families have always held. “In a rapidly changing world, we take pride in ensuring nothing of substance changes at all. Tradition is our greatest innovation, and perpetuation is the sincerest form of loyalty.” As for the administration, Featherstone’s uppity headmistress Arabella Wrenford-Smythe serves as “more than a mere chaperone, she’s a living embodiment of Featherstone elegance — a guide who knows precisely when to whisper, when to judge, and when to adjust your posture.”
The ad, which concludes by making a recruiting pitch to students that they should apply to CMU, is ruffling a few feathers in higher ed circles, but CMU President John Marshall told a Denver TV outlet that the message is a necessary one. “There’s a deep sense that higher ed is off track, so we’re trying to address that in a very authentic and direct way while, hopefully, not taking ourselves quite so seriously,” Marshall said, pointing to the results of recent polls showing steep declines in the public’s trust and confidence in higher education institutions.
Marshall highlighted five problems he believes are currently plaguing higher education: it’s too expensive, students are burdened with too much debt, colleges offer too many irrelevant programs that won’t lead to better jobs, it’s often elitist, and students are being taught “boutique, odd worldviews” that are inconsistent with their real lives.
Marshall said the ad, which was released a couple of weeks ago, is emphasizing that in the ideal college classroom, “we’d like to be able to see a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and a MAGA hat sitting right next to each other, both free to ask questions, both not being ushered to the back or being denigrated in some way for their views but rather a place where kids can learn how to think critically and, frankly, be exposed to difficult ideas.”
In another interview marking CMU’s 100th anniversary, Marshall described the campaign as part of a broader attempt to strengthen middle-class families’ trust in the value of higher education. “This fictional world pokes fun at the problem while emphasizing that CMU cares more about students’ values and who they are as people than who they know or how much wealth their families have,” he said.
Colorado Mesa University has an enrollment of more than 10,000 students, with 29% coming from traditionally underrepresented groups. Its CMU Promise covers full tuition for families earning $70,000 or less annually.
Reactions
The Featherstone ad is generating a lot of buzz. According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, it pulled in 162,000 views on YouTube over its first week online. And CMU Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Brand Strategy Katlin Birdsall said that during the first week of the campaign the ad had gained nearly a quarter of a million views across all social platforms.
Hofstra University President of Marketing and Communications Terry Coniglio called the advertisement “brilliant,” according to the Daily Sentinel.
However, not every one is pleased with the advertisement’s tongue-in-cheek message, citing concerns that it might reinforce negative stereotypes as higher education finds itself struggling in a politically fraught environment. Teresa Valerio Parrot, principal at TVP Communications, criticized the ad’s negative tone. Quoted by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parrot said, “I am not a fan of any institution punching at any other sector of higher education. This is a time for higher education to come together and to talk about how it benefits our students and it benefits society, rather than to take on each other in the public sphere.”
Carol Keese, vice president for university communications at the University of Oregon, told the Chronicle she thought the Featherstone campaign was “wrongheaded” because “higher education is the biggest engine for social mobility the world has ever seen. It is not an engine that reproduces wealth and privilege to the exclusion of everything else.” Acknowledging that higher education has issues it needs to address, Keese added that the “CMU used the moment to ridicule a whole sector, and kind of ironically, in doing so, discount both its own value and the value of the degree that the students they’re supposedly talking to are seeking.”
CMU officials maintain that the ad promotes a “new handshake” between higher education and students who rely on merit and hard work for opportunity, aligning with the Featherstone campaign’s tagline: “If you want something more real, come to CMU where we care about who you are, not who you know.”