Universities pursuing students

We want you! This is the message going out to all students. The universities are rolling out a full marketing and promotion plan to attract students to their faculties with clever PR and promotion material. I wonder how much it costs to do all these? And the question is, 'Is it necessary?' Are the universities recruiting employees to run a factory or business? Why the aggressive promotion to enlist students? Income? Revenue? Are the universities commercial institutions, running a business? One can expect the private schools to do such things as every student means money to them. For state universities, whose roles are to teach and produce trained graduates, why behaving like MacDonald or Bugger King? The employers need to recruit the best and compete for the best. And there are only 3 of them to choose from. Universities need to do that as well? Why can't the universities just do their job in education and let their products speak for them? They are their own monuments of excellence, together with their alumi. The students should be running to them because they are good. It is another thing to run after students to tell them that they are good. When you have to do that, you have lost. Education shall not fall prey to marketing gimmicks. Education is serious stuff. Education as a business is another animal altogether. They exist to make money. Education and quality of education are incidental. They may even compromise to bring in revenue. Does RI or Hwa Chong need to go chasing for good students? Or are they thinking of doing so?