Dispatch
Brand new problem
Name recognition use to take a university and its students far. Is that still the case?
By Nick Harland
Dispatch
Brand new problem
Name recognition use to take a university and its students far. Is that still the case?
By Nick Harland
"Students are becoming more and more focused on quantifiable, ‘hard’ metrics to support their decision-making process."
"Graduates from non-elite institutions often outperform expectations because they've had to work harder to get there."
"Brand name recognition isn’t dead, but it’s perhaps not the force it once was."
In brief
- Elite university prestige no longer guarantees employment, as graduates from top-tier institutions increasingly struggle to secure jobs in a shifting global market focused on tangible value.
- Students and employers are moving beyond "name brands", scrutinising "hard" metrics like ROI and casting wider recruitment nets that value individual performance over institutional prestige.
- Universities must prove their current worth, while students should prioritise specific career outcomes to ensure their educational investment translates into professional success.
After Shriya Boppana finished her undergraduate degree, she prioritised one thing in her search for an MBA: school reputation. Find a university with a strong brand name, the logic went, and the rest would surely follow.
Boppana ended up studying her MBA at a highly-respected school in the US. It is, by almost all accounts, an excellent business school with a global reputation.
But now that she has completed her MBA and spent time at prestigious schools around the world, she has realised that a university’s brand alone may not be as important as she thought. She’s still looking for a job and has had to shift her search to a different industry than she originally planned.
"I've realised that name brand does not lead to the post-education goals that I want,” she explains. “I think it's no longer a linear path... and so I am sitting with the idea that I loved the degree I did and the school I went to, but would I have chosen the same degree knowing that I would face the issues that I am now?"
It seems that Boppana isn’t in a unique position. In the UK, a reported 700,000 graduates are out of work, with even Oxbridge graduates unable to get a job after graduating. In the US, last year it was revealed that almost one-quarter of Harvard Business School MBA graduates were still unemployed three months after graduation. It was a similar story at other globally-renowned schools.
So as graduates from the very best schools in the world struggle to find jobs, it’s worth asking: does the brand name of an institution still offer the same guarantees as it once did? The answer may be a little more complex than yes or no.
"We have seen in the last five to six years that students are becoming more and more focused on quantifiable, ‘hard’ metrics to support their decision-making process,” explains Alex Berka, Insights Manager at QS Quacquarelli Symonds. “Students are having to invest more financially into their education and so they want a more reliable gauge that they are making the right decisions before they make that investment."
It’s something that Boppana agrees with. She thinks that Gen Z “aren't taking brand name at face value anymore”, and are a little more discerning than previous generations. They’re calling out larger institutions and scrutinising them more closely for value for money.
“I think we're going to move more and more in the direction of: what value are you bringing me now versus what value have you brought people in the past?”
There are even signs that major employers are taking less interest in the brand name of a school and are instead casting a wider net to find the best workers. It’s something that’s best illustrated in the McKinsey Early Access programme: a recruitment event targeted at current MBA students, and therefore potential future employees of the consulting giant. In September 2021, the Early Access page listed 17 target US schools that applicants must have attended. By March 2022 however, that list of target schools had been erased. There are no longer any restrictions on who can apply.
“The more honest firms will tell you that graduates from non-elite institutions often outperform expectations because they've had to work harder to get there,” says Dr Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Chancellor of University of North Carolina Greensboro. He does, however, admit recent data suggests more firms are reverting back to 'shortlists of select schools' that presumably carry with them a strong reputation.
According to Berka, it’s not necessarily the case that students or employers no longer care about reputation. It’s more that both are using a wider range of factors than before to assess schools – and reputation very much remains one of them.
However, some people believe this wider focus may actually be having the opposite effect when it comes to student and employer decision-making.
"I actually think a university's brand is more important than ever," says Emily Niedermayer, Managing Director of the college comparison website Appily. "Because when you think about the ways that students are comparing options, they really aren't that different."
Niedermayer says that things like small class sizes and quality of faculty may sound impressive in a university prospectus, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of schools around the world that could claim the same thing. And so, if the margins between schools are becoming increasingly razor thin, brand reputation may actually become a determining factor for students and employers.
One issue with that is the fact that many students tend to see rankings and reputations as ‘interchangeable,’ according to Berka. A strong reputation equates to a high ranking, and vice versa. But that’s not always the case. Harvard University tops the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, but finished 5th in the company’s separate global university ranking. In the latest Financial Times ranking, Harvard’s MBA programme failed to place in the top 10.
What’s more, it seems that whilst rankings fluctuate, reputation is a little more firmly fixed. MIT has been at the top of QS’ ranking for more than a decade now – an extremely rare sight in traditional rankings. But Berka indicates that whilst the so-called elite schools in each country tend to stay wedged towards the top of the rankings, further down the list there can be big fluctuations.
For example, the University of Oxford has swung between 6th and 2nd in the Global QS Ranking since 2015, now sitting at 4th. On the other hand, the University of Liverpool has climbed 43 places since 2023, whilst Newcastle University has fallen by 27 places in the same timeframe. So, what actually constitutes a strong university brand is confusing and often conflated with more volatile measures.
Perception of reputation can also differ depending on region. QS data suggests that East Asian countries such as China, Malaysia and Hong Kong tend to place the most importance on reputation, whilst in Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia, other factors such as financial support, available scholarships and a welcoming environment all come into play.
Although the brand name of her school may not have directly led to the career opportunities she was hoping for, Boppana acknowledges that a university brand still holds plenty of importance. She believes that it 'gets your foot in the door' when it comes to finding a job – but everything after that comes down to your own experience and expertise.
"Employers definitely look for some form of brand name recognition,” she says. “I truly believe they're more likely to give me an interview because of it.”
Still, Boppana may have done things differently had she known what she knows now. She would have started her search with her career goals and worked back from that, identifying universities that had a track record of placing her into her target industry. “I would say to students: don't just go to a school because it looks great [on paper].”
And for universities themselves, one thing is fairly clear: it’s no longer enough to rely on your reputation alone. If you can’t meet the wide range of criteria that students are using to make their decision, that reputation built over many years may slowly be chipped away at. Brand name recognition isn’t dead, but it’s perhaps not the force it once was.