I saw an interesting item up for bid on eBay this morning…an entire year of tuition, room, and board at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

Apparently, the bidding started Saturday, with the price now up to $7,500 (as of 3:30 pm on 2/5/07).  Tuition, room, and board at this university usually cost about $23,000, so this eBay bid is setting someone up to grab a major bargain. 

In a Q&A press release on the school's website, university official Mike Colaw says the university is doing this in order to get some attention, which is clearly working quite well.  Local news sites KTUL, KOTV, and KFOR CNET, MSNBC, and TechNewsWorld have all picked up the story.

Despite the financial deal this auction is giving one lucky student, it isn't a complete free ride.  The winning person must meet all application requirements, and must have filled out all appropriate financial aid paperwork in order to be eligible to win the prize.

I think this is a great way to get the word out about a small college.  It seems to me that universities often limit their online outreach to their brochure websites, which are usually clunky and, due to the large amounts of information stored on them, difficult to navigate.  Using such a creative marketing technique seems like an effective way to break out of the mold and get attention from new sources.