Hey, Lu, market this.

I WROTE AN ARTICLE LAST week on the cultural change in Arkansas that Lu Hardin, ubiquitous president of the University of Central Arkansas, jumpstarted with his aggressive student recruitment advertising. The state is showing some statistical success in getting more residents to enroll in college and in getting more to complete bachelor's degrees, although the percentage who drop out of college remains entirely too high.

I know there are people who question the stewardship of spending several million taxpayer dollars every year to promote the various state-supported colleges. I'm not one of those people, and I'm not saying this just because my employer receives a few of those dollars. While there's certainly a limit to how much should be spent advertising colleges, we haven't reached it. If there's anything that has been undersold to the people of Arkansas, it is the value of a college education.

Even UCA, the advertising leader among Arkansas colleges and universities, spends about $225 per year for each of the 4,000 additional students it has attracted since Hardin became president in 2002. That's considerably less than Alltel spends to get a new customer, which is routinely over $300. (Hey, maybe the colleges could smack a big penalty on students who don't complete their multi-year agreement.)

Aggressive, consistent marketing has changed attitudes toward smoking and drunk driving. I'm even feeling guilty because, according to the new ads, I should have kept my boys in booster car seats years longer than I did. Somehow they survived to become teenagers, and now that they are finally willing to eat raisin bran, the cereal makers are backing off the advertising of super-sweet cereals to kids. Unfortunately, Alltel seems to have taken a step backward by sucking my 13-year-old into an online advertising campaign called the Official Mancave.

I don't think any school has hit upon a marketing campaign that will make kids want a college degree as badly as my boy wants his own cell phone. But maybe the current marketing efforts--aimed at high school kids and their parents or young adults who are already kicking themselves for not going to college straight out of high school--should be supplemented with some ads planting the idea in much younger children.

Almost half (48 percent) of Arkansas high school graduates who go to college require some amount of remediation before they are ready for true college-level work. That's certainly an issue for the high schools to address, but having more students who think of themselves as "college-bound" at an earlier age surely couldn't hurt. I can visualize an ad encouraging grade-schoolers to apply themselves to their classwork so they will be ready for "College: The Ultimate Teenage Experience."

If the stars of "High School Musical" would help out, Katie bar the door.

I recently wrote about my customer service nightmares. Here's an update.

* After four months and a complaint to the Texas Attorney General's office, I did receive a replacement for the defective telephone I received at Christmas. Then, in July, I received another one. I'm keeping it. This particular manufacturer deserves to lose money on me.

* The online service that had suckered my son by offering unlimited music downloads free for one month reversed the charges on my credit card.

Meanwhile, I've started to suspect that the mail-in rebate industry has taken a cue from the health insurers. Two sizable rebates for which I was clearly qualified were rejected until I made a fuss.

Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. E-mail her at [e-mail].