Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… Institutions poaching on goodwill of other established brands confirm this.

My son studied at Oxford and now is pursuing further studies in US…

This is how an elderly gentlemen from a countryside town in Maharashtra informed me in a casual chitchat. Notice the stress on “oxford” and “US”. Not “UK” and “Arizona”. My bias for brands obviously got me interested even more in the son and so I asked him a few more details just to camouflage my surprise. Guys, it turned out that the son had studied at the Oxford Brooks University and not at “Oxford” as such. I am not at all suggesting that Oxford Brooks is not an University to study and my point is simply how parents treat education primarily to lift their social image than anything else. It is entirely possible that the course that the student studied is better-delivered at the University that he studied in than at the Oxford University. However, this has got me to recall that in past I have had…

My son is studying at LSC…

(pronounced in a way that it sounded like the much hallowed LSE than London School of “Commerce” which is in no-way comparable.) I made the error of clarifying to the father that LSC is not linked to London School of Economics and letting his flaunt fall flat in front of relatives. This is the reason why this day I didnot correct the misrepresentation of Oxford Brookes as Oxford. Once again LSC may be delivering its program perfectly but my problem with institutions deliberately adopting names that tries to poach on the goodwill of other brands.

This is similar to Central Queensland University graduates referring to having studied at “Queensland University” possibly deliberately confusing the world with “University of Queensland”. Here the fault is not so much of CQU but some inner insecurity on the part of the students. In India, IIMs turning out to be International Institutes of Managements rather than the Indian Institute of Management is also common.

At a wedding I found the groom enlightening his in-laws and his new bride on the “Doon” schooling that he had till I asked a simple question that a dosco asks another from the same school: “Ah Doon! What a co-incidence, which house? Which batch?”. The embarrassed groom made me feel unwanted at his wedding as he indicated that he had not entered the Chandbagh estate at all and had studied at another school in Dehradun though had given an impression of his being a DOON alum. Well…

In Kolkata or Delhi or for the matter of fact in any Indian University, those who study at the right colleges, tend to name the college as his alma mater (such as Stephens or SRCC…) while all the rest refer to them having studied at CU or DU…

Education is gradually becoming more and more of a brand concept than what we study at the college. Possibly this was the same always. What bothers me are the copy-cats. By copying others they only lower themselves. The one who is being copied will remain the one being copied. Hence Global Reach will remain Global Reach and the Global XXX and the likes will remain just XXX.

They say that the imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… I want to believe that it is so.