The Prestige Trap
Every university president says they want to be “distinctive.” Then they copy Harvard!
For thirty years, we’ve known this was killing us, and we’ve done it anyway.
In 1994, Susan Gates and her RAND colleagues published research that should have changed higher education forever. “In Pursuit of Prestige” documented what they called “strategic herding,” the tendency of universities to abandon their unique missions and chase the same narrow definition of excellence.
The data was damning. Institutions were investing millions to climb rankings that rewarded selectivity over impact, exclusivity over access, reputation over results. Community colleges tried to become liberal arts colleges. Regional universities tried to become research institutions. Everyone wanted to be more selective, more residential, more prestigious.
Gates wrote: “The pursuit of prestige leads institutions to make decisions that are individually rational but collectively destructive.”
Think about that. Individually rational. Collectively destructive.
We knew this in 1994. We watched it happen anyway.
Today, universities spend fortunes on amenities students don’t need. We compete for the same “high-achieving” students while the majority of learners go underserved. We measure success by who we reject rather than who we transform. We’ve built a system where every institution tries to move up a ladder that, by definition, most cannot climb.
The wisdom Gates offered was elegant: “Institutions that try to be all things to all people end up being nothing special to anyone.”
What if we had listened?
What if, instead of chasing prestige, we had competed on mission? What if regional universities had doubled down on serving their regions brilliantly? What if access institutions had made access their superpower, not their shame?
The future of higher education won’t be built by institutions trying to become something they’re not. It will be built by those brave enough to become fully, unapologetically, excellently themselves.
Re-imagining the university means remembering what we forgot thirty years ago: distinctiveness comes from purpose, not prestige. The race to the top is really a race to the middle.
The question is no longer whether Gates was right. The question is how much longer we’ll pretend she wasn’t.
This article was inspired by a discussion with a friend, Christopher Washington, Ph.D. I appreciate the great input, and the perfect book recommendation. A series of posts and articles may follow under the name: “Wisdom .. Forgotten”. Thank you.
Book: In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education
Authors: Susan M. Gates, with Dominic J. Brewer, et al.
Published: 1994, RAND Corporation
Core Insight: Strategic imitation in pursuit of prestige creates institutional homogeneity and undermines the diversity that higher education needs to serve diverse populations.
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“Wisdom .. Forgotten” is a series exploring timeless insights from overlooked classics that still shape, or should reshape, how we think about the future of the university.