Author:
An Observer
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Date Posted: 14:57:17 01/07/25 Tue
I agree with you, observer, and not just because of YOUR brand name.
Brand reputations can change and disappear. You don't need to go as far back as Xerox and Kodak dominating in the 60's and 70's.
How about Nokia? Intel? Hewlett-Packard? Texas Instruments? These companies dominated in the 2000's and 2010's. How many of you had ever heard of Nvidia before 2022? Now it is arguably the most important company in the world. Not the largest market cap, the most important.
When Jack Welch retired from General Electric in 2001, the consensus on Wall Street and among fawning analysts was, "This is the best run corporation on earth. A unique portfolio of industrial and financial operating companies which define corporate synergy." Now when people talk about GE at all, it's usually in reference to corporate earnings manipulation.
Brand reputations do change. A lot.
Having said that, university reputations change more slowly. With the singular exception of Stanford, which rose from nowhere post-war to being on par with HYP today, maybe better than on par.
HYP have been at the top of the mountain since the turn of the nineteenth century. I have a lot of theories as to why their brand names have been so stable, but for now let's just say that it will be very interesting to see what the long term effects will be from the Gay/Magill resignations and all the campus protests in particular, and the mandated heavy-duty progressive dogma in general.
We take university brand names as a given, a fixed entity. They are not. University admissions officers know this. That's why, just in our own conference, Columbia so aggressively gamed their numbers. It's a competitive game.
Never in our lifetimes have our eight universities been under such attack and criticism. The eight presidents and eight directors of admission can go to work every morning knowing that their actions today will make or break their institutions' reputations in three or four decades hence.
I wonder whether the admissions directors at Barnard and Columbia realize just how much their jobs are affected when the New York Times publishes a photograph of a kid camped out on the Low Library lawn wearing a keffiyeh on his head.
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