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Key points
- The term branding is derived from the burning of cattle and slaves.
- A focus in branding often distracts from more essential missions.
- Colleges and universities need to refocus from how they are perceived to what they are.
Colleges and universities seem to be devoting more attention than ever to their brands. As reported by the New York Times, at a January summit of university presidents at Yale University, Harvard University’s branding woes held center stage. Wracked by controversies surrounding anti-Semitism, the perceived coddling of pro-Palestinian groups, a poor Congressional performance, and plagiarism allegations against its president, Harvard saw a drop of 17 percent in early-admission applications, with prominent donors vowing to withhold support until the university gets its house in order.
The most notable slide shared during the Yale conference’s presentations compared Harvard’s “negative buzz” to corporations such as Boeing and Tesla. Said the business school professor who organized the conference, “Brand equity is nowhere near as permanent as Harvard’s trustees seem to think it is.” The unstated assumption—colleges and universities can thrive only by protecting and promoting their brands, and those that allow their brands to founder are condemning themselves to decline and perhaps even extinction.
Institutions of higher education need to divert attention from their brands to their missions. The purpose of a college or university is not to build its endowment, increase the competitiveness of its admissions program, or advance the careers of its senior administrators, and especially not to burnish its brand. Instead, the purpose of a college or university is to advance the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge through excellence in teaching, research, and service to the community and society.
Branding is an old practice. Ancient Egyptians branded (“burned”) livestock and slaves to establish ownership, an approach more recently reflected in the tattooing of concentration camp inmates. Today, however, the term more often refers to a business’s image and values. Among the world’s most valuable brands today are Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The idea that people value a product or service more or less highly based on its brand is captured in recent declines in the valuations of Trump-branded condominiums, with increases for those that removed the Trump name.
Branding can go disastrously awry. Consider, for example, the 2023 branding efforts of Anheuser-Busch, which enlisted the services of TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, to promote its Bud Light beer. The beer’s VP of marketing justified the campaign by arguing that the brand had been in decline for many years, and if it did not take steps to attract young drinkers, “there would be no future for Bud Light.” During the ensuing boycott, which enjoyed wide support among some quarters, Bud Light sales fell by approximately 26 percent, with a 20 percent decline in the company’s stock.
What had changed about the product in bottles and cans labeled Bud Light? Absolutely nothing. Yet Bud Light was soon replaced as the nation’s best-selling beer, a status it has failed to regain, by Modelo Especial. What changed was not the beer itself but the public perception of it, which is to say its brand. Such examples dramatize the degree to which branding is a matter not of substance but of image. Suppose, for example, that Coca-Cola was rebranded as caramel-colored fizzy water, Quarter Pounders as processed beef-patty sandwiches, or Mastercard as a high-interest consumer loan program. What’s in a name? Quite a lot, apparently.
A focus on brand and branding often distracts from an organization’s core product or service. As leaders devote more and more attention to image, the focus on substance tends to wane. Perhaps in the cases of novelty products such as the Pet Rock, the damage is not especially concerning, but when it comes to a field such as higher education, which shapes young adults as citizens, neighbors, and human beings, the stakes are considerably higher. Higher education is a trillion-dollar sector of the economy, and it has spawned a cottage industry in higher education branding.
Colleges and universities are now attempting to define their branding propositions, based on a vision of who they are and what they stand for. Administrators, faculty, and students become brand ambassadors, challenged to “live the brand.” Underlying such efforts is a conception of students as consumers, faculty as vendors, and university administrators as brand managers. Institutions such as Harvard and Yale have long had mottos—“Truth” and “Light and Truth,” respectively—but now they are increasingly focused on developing and deploying marketing campaigns.
Too often, what institutions such as Harvard are doing is focusing on how they are seen and would like to be seen instead of what they in fact are. To quote the Times article’s title, the university is attempting to “stop the spiral” of plummeting brand value, with less attention to reestablishing and reconnecting with its core purposes. Like many if not most of its fellow institutions of higher education, Harvard seems locked in the view that reputation is the currency of higher education, by which it attracts faculty, research funding, donors, and students.
In the end, what should matter most to colleges and universities is not branding but substance—not reputation, endowment growth, or market share, but knowledge and truth. The most important thing for such institutions is not how they are seen or whether they are marching up or down the rankings, but what they are. What is needed is not more branding perfume but what John Henry Newman called “a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes.”
