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(Tenured Radical)

Sunday, January 30, 2005

BRANDED NATION


James B. Twitchell, an English professor at the University of Florida with an engaging prose style, has written a book called Branded Nation, which argues that American colleges and universities have become consumer brands rather than intellectual communities. An excerpt from the book appears online in The Wilson Quarterly, and UD quotes from it below (UD thanks one of her readers, Bill, for the link).



Readers of this blog will recognize most of University Diaries’ recurrent themes (the easiest way to "Search" UD is to put a key word up there in the Search box) in what Twitchell has to say. But Twitchell says this stuff more strongly than UD.

Consider UD’s early posts about distance education (11/21/03, for instance) and the disappearance of the classroom. Those posts look anemic next to this:

“From a branding point of view, what happens in the classroom is beside the point. I mean that literally. The old image of the classroom as fulfillment of the Socratic ideal is no longer even invoked. High Ed, Inc., is more like a sawmill. A few years ago, Harvard University started a small department called the Instructional Computer Group, which employs several people to videotape about 30 courses a semester. Although it was intended for students who unavoidably missed class, it soon became a way not to attend class. Any enrolled student could attend on the Web, fast-forwarding through all the dull parts. This is ‘distance education’ from a dorm room, at an advertised $37,928 a year.”

[By the way, for some intriguing university branding ideas, see Fenster Moop.]

Or what about UD’s more recent posts on the controversy at Harvard over its endowment and the salaries it’s been giving its money men (1/11/05, etc.)? Here’s Twitchell on the subject:


“Ask almost anyone in the education industry what’s the most overrated brand and they’ll tell you ‘Harvard.’ It’s one of the most timid and derivative schools in the country, yet it has been able to maintain a reputation as the uber-brand. …Why is Harvard synonymous with the ne plus ultra? …Because of what goes in: namely, the best students, the most contributed money… Everyone knows that Harvard is the most selective university, with a refusal rate of almost 90 percent. But more important, the school is obscenely rich, with an endowment of almost $20 billion [If UD may break in here: That figure is now 22.6 billion. It's hard to keep up.] Remember that number. It’s key to the brand. The endowment is greater than the assets of the Dell computer company, the gross domestic product of Libya, the net worth of all but five of the Forbes 400, or the holdings of every nonprofit in the world except the Roman Catholic Church....

In a marketing sense, the value of the endowment is not monetary but psychological. Any place with that many zeros after the dollar sign has got to be good. The huge endowments of the nameplate schools force other schools, the second-tier schools, to spend themselves into penury. So your gift to Harvard does more harm than good to the general weal of Higher Ed, Inc. It does, however, maintain the Harvard brand. … Every two weeks…Harvard‘s endowment throws off enough cash to cover all undergraduate tuition.”

And on the subject of money: recall UD’s posts (8/6/04, etc.) about legacy admissions and the emergent trend toward “developmental admits.” Here’s Twitchell:

“At many schools, there’s a buried pipeline that connects the development office with the admissions office. Most academic administrators prefer that it be buried deep, but from time to time someone digs it up. In The Wall Street Journal for February 3, 2003, Daniel Golden reported on how the formal practice of giving preference to students whose parents are wealthy … has profound implications not just for affirmative action but for the vaunted academic ideal of fair play.”

UD’s post on Veyron/Collegiate (10/26/04) seems, if she’s reading her stats properly, one of her most popular. Here’s Twitchell on the same subject:

“[T]he cost of tuition has become unimportant in the Ivy League. Like grade inflation, it’s uncontrollable - and hardly anyone in Higher Ed, Inc. really cares. As with other luxury providers, the higher the advertised price, the longer the line.”

Review UD’s post in response to Walter Kirn’s Atlantic piece on the meritocracy (1/21/05); then look at Twitchell:

“[T]he elite [colleges] are not as concerned with learning as they are with maintaining selectivity at the front door and safe passage to still-higher education at the back door. … The … nifty irony… is that, among elite schools, the more the consumer pays for formal education (or at least is charged), the less of it he or she gets. The mandated class time necessary to qualify for a degree is often less at Stanford than at State U. As a general rule, the better the school, the shorter the week. At many good schools, the weekend starts on Thursday. .. Hardly anyone in Higher Ed, Inc. cares about what is taught, because that is not our charge. We are not in the business of transmitting what E.D. Hirsch would call cultural literacy… . We’re in the business of creating a total environment, delivering an experience, gaining satisfied customers, and applying the ‘smart’ stamp when they head for the exits. The classroom reflects this. Our real business is being transacted elsewhere on campus.”

Or again, recall UD’s post about Gregg Easterbrook and David Brooks (1/12/05), who offer truths about the college “selectivity” hysteria that UD sees all the time among ‘thesdan parents. Twitchell’s on to that one too:

“[Though] no one in the business will openly admit it, getting into college is a cinch. The problem, of course, is that too many students want to get into the same handful of nameplate colleges, making it seem that the entire market is tight. It most certainly is not.”




UD’s early series on grade inflation, starring Janice Sidley (11/30/03, etc., etc.), looks longwinded next to Twitchell’s condensed version:

“At the turn of the 20th century, one percent of high school graduates attended college; that figure is now close to 70 percent. This is an industry that produces a yearly revenue flow more than six times the revenue generated by the steel industry. …College has become what high school used to be, and thanks to grade inflation, it’s almost impossible to flunk out.”

Twitchell doesn’t, in this excerpt, touch on the other side of the impossibility of flunking out -- the impossibility, for millions of students, of actually graduating (see UD, 5/27/04). Which has produced universities full of wandering disheveled stars…




There are some fine little factoids in Twitchell’s book. Who knew that ye olde University of Southern Mississippi, magic fiefdom of Shelby Thames (12/12/04), is “planning a full-fledged water park”?