More iPhone bait – Oklahoma Christian University offers Apple MacBook and iPhone to new students
By Will Park on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 PM PST In Announcements, Apple, Devices, Partnerships, iPhone, iPhone OS
Not to be outdone by the other religious college’s move to entice new students with a free iPhone, Oklahoma Christian University is now offering incoming freshman a new Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) MacBook and a choice between an iPhone or iPod Touch (presumably for those that don’t want to activate the iPhone and pay for service – cough, jailbreak/unlock, cough).
Like the other iPhone offering, this gimmick new initiative is being supported by Apple under the auspices of integrating technology with higher-education. Right, we’re sure they chose to give students a high-profile Apple iPhone because it was the perfect device to bring high-technology to their new student body – it had nothing to do with attracting more new students.
New students attending the New Student Orientation programs will be treated to a new Apple MacBook and that hype-attracting iPhone. If you want a free MacBook and iPhone, may we suggest you spend a few years at Oklahoma Christian University?
Give us $100,000 over the course of four years and we will give you some moderately expensive electronics (that will surely be outdated by graduation)!
What ever happened to judging a school on its academic programs?
Oklahoma Christian University has several degree programs ranked within the top five of their category in the United States. The Princeton Review has named it one of the best colleges in the Midwest, and the university is ranked consistently in the top ten universities in its region. I hardly think my school has anything to worry about when it comes to being chosen for academic merit.
I appreciate your journalistic ethic, but it seems to me it will be mid-way through the fall before the students will be able to weigh the program and judge the its academic merit. Let’s leave the rush to judgment to cable new political pundits. . .
So if the university had gone with Dells and Blackberries would anyone be crying gimmick? I’m stumped.
No one cried gimmick when we switched from IBM to Dell.