USM ran ads recruiting white students in Maine and minorities in Massachusetts

Maine’s second-biggest public university used a software platform to promote itself to white students in northern New England while targeting minority students in Massachusetts, a practice that the institution said it no longer uses.

The University of Southern Maine did that targeting in 2016 through a contract with the company that owned Naviance, a college readiness software provider that also runs an advertising platform. The $27,000 contract was first published earlier this month in an article by The Markup detailing how Naviance markets colleges and universities to prospective students.

The granular look at one piece of the public university’s past recruiting efforts comes amid a reckoning around race-based admissions at American institutions. The conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court agreed last week to hear a case challenging race-based admissions at the private Harvard University in Massachusetts and the public University of North Carolina.

Naviance allowed schools to tailor what type of student might see advertising based on several demographics, including race and location. In USM’s case, it advertised the university to Black, white and Hispanic students in Massachusetts and only white students in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Read more: https://bangordailynews.com/2022/01/30/news/portland/usm-ran-ads-recruiting-white-students-in-maine-and-minorities-in-massachusetts-joam40zk0w/