ABSTRACT

While academic capitalism pervades many facets of US higher education, this study analyzes paid adwords as a method of academic capitalism in the online marketplace. This article presents findings from a five-month quantitative analysis of paid adwords of the 2018 top US News & World Report top 100 national universities. Capturing the Fall 2017 application season, this study investigated how many, when, and what adwords institutions purchase and how cost efficient these adwords were by words-per-click and price-per-click. Data indicate private institutions buy more adwords and pay a greater amount than public institutions but do not generate more traffic from these adwords. Regression analyses find better-ranked institutions generate more traffic from adwords than lower-ranked peers, but similar analyses predicting adwords and cost were not statistically significant. These findings suggest a stratified Internet marketplace, with better-ranked institutions practicing academic capitalism to drive web traffic toward their websites during application season.

摘要

尽管学术资本主义遍及美国高等教育的许多方面，但本研究分析了付费adwords作为在线市场中学术资本主义的一种方法。本文介绍了对2018年《美国新闻与世界报道》的付费AdWords进行的为期五个月的定量分析得出的结论国立大学前100名。抓住2017年秋季的申请季节，这项研究调查了多少，何时，什么adwords机构购买了这些adwords，以及这些AdWords的每次点击费用和每次点击价格如何具有成本效益。数据表明，与公共机构相比，私人机构购买的AdWords数量更多，支付的费用更高，但这些AdWords不会产生更多的流量。回归分析发现，排名较高的机构比排名较低的机构从adwords产生的流量更多，但是类似的分析预测adwords和成本却没有统计学意义。这些发现表明互联网市场是分层的，排名更高的机构在实践应用学术资本主义期间将网络流量推向其网站。