Branding and the business model of research universities
Our daughter only applied to two colleges, Washington University in St. Louis and Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. Tuition wasn’t an issue, since her mom was an employee of Wash U, and the university pays full tuition at Wash U or half of Wash U’s tuition at any other college or university for all its employees. Half of Wash U’s tuition would cover most or all out-of-state tuition at any state university. Some of our St. Louis friends asked me if I was going to make her attend Wash U, since it is a “better school.” The prestigious reputation of Washington University and other elite universities owes itself in significant degree to their reputation for research. The average undergrad will do little or no research in college, and many of the top researchers spend little or no time teaching undergrads. So in what sense is a research university “better” for the average undergrad? In the event, our daughter went to Colorado State (which is also a research university), mostly t...