Higher Ed Utah

Yes, you read correctly!  Social media news site, “The New Web” (TNW) blogged today about an amazing scholarship opportunity that KFC is offering to high school students in the 2011 graduating year with a cumulative GPA of 2.75 (or higher) that can produce the best tweet beginning with, “I should be a #KFCScholar Because…”  Read more here for the original article and detailed instructions on how to enter the contest. 

This is a great idea not only because it offers a substantial amount of money for students to use towards higher education, but also because it represents a significant effort by the social media to chisel away at the wall that separates them and the ideals of the education system. Look at school districts blocking access to social media websites on their facility’s computers for instance.  Do you think we are denying the college students, professionals, teachers, and leaders of the future the ability to access to one of the best resources that the world has to offer? Are we protecting them from the negative influences that plague the internet today by limiting access to sites in schools?

Also in the article, one of the key points that KFC’s Marketing Chief, John Cywinski touches on, is that social media websites like Twitter are “how this generation communicates” and that “its a generation used to instant messaging and immediate gratification.”  With that being said, do you think that catering to this generation’s need for “immediate gratification” is necessarily the right direction to take? Would you like to see more efforts like this that reach out to the younger generation’s interests?  Tell us what you think!