We had a hard time coming up for a lead for this article.

We thought we would start with something funny or clever- “CSUN has made it to the pages of Time magazine!” Or perhaps, “Wow! We are advertising in a national magazine!”

But this is too serious for that.

This university has resently hired out its campus to advertise for another university.

That’s like General Motors lending a Cadillac for Chrysler to sell their car or Pepsi lending its logo to sell Coke products.

It costs a full-time student about $3,000 a year in studenfees to use Manzanita Hall and other facilities. It cost tax-payers $21 million to build the structure, presumably for the exclusive use of students. Your CSUN administrators sold it for $2,140 to hawk for an online university.

Have they no shame?

You can hardly blame Walden University. They don’t have a physical campus to lure potential students to. What was the answer to its conundrum? Have an ad agency find some buildings to give an impression of there being a “there” to an on-line university.

What better way of advertising for a university with no buildings than to use a real building from a conventional university. Genius! All they needed was a sucker.

But what university would be stupid enough to sell out its own buildings to advertise for the competition? That’s what Walden really is. It appeals to students who work and don’t have enough time for the full on-campus college experience. Sound familiar?

This incident really shows us that education is becoming more and more like a business. The administration is doing all it can to sell companies access to students, not to mention how it allows the campus to be used for movies and advertisements.

This advertisement reveals how far this business mentality has permeated CSUN. To give the green light to another university to use our campus is an act of spectacular incompetence, not to mention an example of low ethics. How could this happen?

If we are using our campus to attract students to another university, perhaps we should consider the next step; actually having another campus hold classes here at CSUN!

It makes good business sense.

Walden charges a lot more for tuition than CSUN does our students. We could provide some classes and they could provide the instructors.

Yes, we would have to displace some students, but think of the profits.

CSUN could make far more renting out classes than say, renting out the campus to Disney to make awful movies that no one ever sees.

Yes, this is sarcasm, but is this so far from reality? How many other universities rent out their buildings for other schools to advertise for them? Does UCLA or USC let ITT Tech use its buildings to help other institutions get students? No, they have high standards and they aren’t that stupid.

Will the money raised help our students? I think you know the answer to that.

It will help bring students to Walden University. It’s nice to know that someone out there knows how to make good use of our campus.

———–

Unsigned editorials represent the view of the Sundial editorial board and are not necessarily those of the Journailism Department. Other views on the opinion page are those of the individual writer.