Brands in higher education

There had been a remarkable phenomenon in colonial India that has not been focused upon or researched adequately""educational institutions that acquired brand value because almost invariably they were run by missionaries. Whether at school or college level, the story was the same. At college level, St Stephen's College in Delhi, St Xavier's in Mumbai, and Loyola and Madras Christian College in Chennai are excellent examples. They have for long been targets of social (if not always educational) aspiration in India.

In colonial times, it was only natural that an implicit status would attach to those who attended these institutions and that the rulers, in shouldering the burden of the empire, would prefer them to others. That was how the alumni from these institutions became important in the ruling establishment of India, whether in government or business. It was the quintessential British system wherein "passing muster" was not just a matter of scholastic ability but also, so to speak, if you were "all right" socially.

It is no coincidence that those aspirants who had the opposite attributes""high scholastic ability but "not quite making the cut"""would be given berths in non-missionary institutions. Every presidency town had one such nationalist institution. Presidency College in Chennai is a good example of it, and in Delhi, it is Hindu College. But although these rivals were at least as good, if not sometimes better, in terms of faculty and examination results, they never achieved the brand status that the various missionary institutions did. This was because they were seen, socially, as the place where the "rejects" went. The criterion for the rejection was, however, never questioned.

In a very broad sense, the Indian college system thus began to reflect the Oxford-Cambridge pattern. From the late 18th century onwards, Oxford was where you went to make friends and Cambridge was where you went to get serious education. In consequence, even though Cambridge can now boast of almost a 100 Nobel laureates, Oxford is still the preferred place for networking. It has produced nearly 30 prime ministers of Britain. Cambridge's prime ministers are to be found mostly in the former colonies. Jawaharlal Nehru is the most well-known among them.

After Independence, all but one of the missionary institutions shed the social criterion for admission and began to focus primarily on academic excellence. The result was that for nearly half a century, with only a few cases of admission every year by pull (gaining entrance, for example, for non-existent shooting skills), academically the best students went to these colleges.

This strengthened their brands even further. Not only did they have the attributes that attract social aspiration now, they also got the cream of students. In due course, they became more like the late 19th century exclusive clubs in Britain, where it was more important to have money (marks in this case) than an aristocratic background but, if you had both, it improved your chances of gaining entry.

About 10 years ago, that comfortable system started to show the strains of the pressures that develop when a brand becomes the victim of its own hype. As long as they were getting by far the best students, it was easy for these colleges to sustain the myth of academic superiority. But what is the difference, except in luck, between a student who gets 87 per cent in Class 12 and another who gets 93 per cent? How do you know who is really better? Unrequited branding has now led to other pressures, coming from the political arena as also from donors. A dethroning of brands therefore seems a distinct possibility.