Nerve Endings Firing Away

My brother recently started a discussion on his alma mater’s alumni website, asking a pertinent question whether reputed colleges can tread down the path of branding. New York University (NYU) recently topped the list of colleges that increased your chances of landing a job upon graduation. It was followed by a veritable stream of reputed universities like Harvard, U Penn, MIT, Stanford, and other colleges that you see on almost all national rankings. In spite of numerous universities in the US, only a handful hog the limelight right from academic rankings to research grants.

For example, Harvard is a brand in itself and has established itself as the premier educational and research institution in the US. No one can deny the clout of the Harvard brand and it can open several doors for you which otherwise would not even entertain your presence. The brand or the name of a university is almost sacrosanct in boosting your career chances. Even if you graduate with an English major from Harvard, you will definitely not be unemployed for more than a week. Just exchange that major with something hot like Bioengineering or Genetics, you will be hounded by employers relentlessly. You have the Harvard brand on your resume and nothing is going to matter more than that. Of course, someone’s talent and skills might easily surpass one of Harvard graduates but alas, that person doesn’t have the brand. He is simply washed away by a name that has established itself over the years as a brand. Doors close even before you see them.

Similarly in India, the IIT or the IIM brand has established itself as the must-have for an intellectual or an aspiring careerist. Graduating from these institutions does not necessarily mean that you are smarter or more intelligent that your peers, who may have opted not to attend but in the end does grant you access to an old-boys network of their esteemed alumni.

So ultimately, does it make sense to establish reputed academic institutions as a brand? You wear Nike to appear cool or sport Oakley to stand out. Of course, the quality of these products is not suspect but branding is such a powerful tool in marketing that minor blemishes are largely ignored. However, can such comparisons be made in the academia? Aren’t manuscripts accepted for publication just because the author is from a particular university rather than for the quality of the research? Aren’t graduates of Columbia or MIT a virtual shoo-in for an interview in the top companies? Isn’t the fact true that you are more likely to get a NIH funding if you are Johns Hopkins than from any other university?

Universities are a brand albeit informal ones. But do they have to take formal steps to establish that brand. Maybe not; because most of the benefits are underlying and manifest themselves through informal channels like alumni networking and preferential treatment by overawed employers. Sirf naam hee kaafi hai – aptly describes academic branding. You just have to be smart enough to recognize the current hot brand, sneak in and ride the wave to success.