Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Academic Brands And Cognitive Dissonance, Mark Bartholomew

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 7 in Academic Brands: Distinction in Global Higher Education (Mario Biagioli & Madhavi Sunder, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2022).

It is hard to reconcile the research university’s supposed reason for being – the reasoned pursuit of knowledge – with its methods for building brand awareness and equity. Just like pitches for other luxury goods, the selling of higher education depends on irrational appeals devoid of information and marketing missives meant to hug the line between legally protected puffery and outright fraud. Although universities have always borrowed from the selling strategies of the commercial sphere, in recent years, …