I went to Wharton and all I got was this lousy certificate.
This Philadelphia Inquirer headline caught my eye this week: “Putting a price on Wharton’s prestige.” The story concerns a man who sued the University of Pennsylvania. Why? His graduate program, a joint effort of Penn’s engineering school and its Wharton School, gave him a management degree from the engineering school and a “certificate of completion” from Wharton. He wanted – and thought he was earning – the degree from Wharton, one of the top business schools in the country. He cried foul, and last week, a federal court awarded him nearly half a million dollars.
According to the article, Frank Reynolds, the business exec at the center of this, “said simply attending classes at the Wharton School had quickly proved its worth.” So, he got the education he wanted, but not the brand name he thought would come with it.
It seems to be, for him, a case of the packaging not being as good as what it contains. This happens all the time – heck, helping institutions better communicate who they are (so that their outside matches their inside) is what we do here at Mindpower.
We talk quite a bit, with our clients and among ourselves, about a brand being a promise. You have to be clear about what you’re promising, and then deliver it. And that promise, that brand has a value. In our consumer-driven society, some brands are “better” than others – the name on the label matters.
Was Reynolds right to sue because the name on his label wasn’t Wharton?
Does the name on the diploma matter more than the sum of the experiences you had earning it – the things you learned, the people you learned with and from?
What do you think? Is this a case of label-consciousness taken to the extreme, or just wanting to receive what you think you’re paying for?
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May 27, 2010 at 11:50 am
As the saying goes: nobody cares where you went to college – they only care where you graduated from.
Theoretically, one could take 117 credits at a no-name institution, transfer to Harvard, take one three-credit course and graduate with a degree from Harvard.
Names like Harvard, Yale, Wharton, Stanford, etc. not only carry a high-level of brand recognition, but their prestige and selectivity communicate their worth.
Not to discount other colleges, each institution carries its own brand recognition and reputation. When you decide to go (and graduate) from a school, you’re “buying” into the brand and the future networking and career growth that’s associated with the brand.
In this case, the student paid for the brand and network associated with Wharton. He was right to recoup his costs.