College student blogs used by universities as recruiting tool

Picking up on the blogging trend colleges are using college student blogs as means to promote their school to prospective applicants. Students are being approached by Universities and in some cases being paid to blog about their school activities.

This from Tim O’Keeffe, director of Web content at Colgate in this mornings Chicago Tribune:

We are advocates of blogs. We see them as a way to build connections with prospective students and as a way to reaffirm connections with alumni.

Here’s the list of student blogs in the Chicago Tribune.

• http://mylife.udayton.edu/page/allison
• http://mylife.udayton.edu/page/emily
• http://mylife.udayton.edu/page/andrew
• http://wofford.typepad.com/hannah
• http://wofford.typepad.com/wes
• http://www.colgate.blogs.com/gatelife

With millions of high school kids publishing and reading blogs, colleges useing student blogs for recruiting makes a ton of sense. If the legal profession were not behind the times, we’d see law schools and law firms using student and associate blogs, respectively, for recruiting.