A Brilliant Illumination

My sister is brilliant. We were talking about schools and cultures, comparing ours with what we understand of England's and Australia's (especially since she's about to attend university in Australia). We talked about how laid back Australians seem to be about university, especially at her school, James Cook University, considering their common posts about campus reminding students that they must wear shoes to class and the lack of university paraphernalia in the bookstore (though the University of Tasmania had plenty of clothing, school supplies, and other objects all labeled UTas). Don't get us wrong--education seems to be important in Australia, but it's the education that one receives at a university rather than which university one attends that seems to matter.

On to the brilliant point: Charise (my sister) rightly associated America's obsessiveness with "school names" with its same obsessiveness with brand names. The schools' names, not necessarily their programs, professors, etc. are what are important to we Americans, not the quality of the education (though the quality may be what created the prestige behind the name in the first place), or education itself, really (more on that in a different post). Just as you are cool or hip or hot if you are dressed in The Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch, so are you entitled to honor (or have honor heaved upon or assumed of you) if you attend one of these prestigious, "brand name" schools.

Why are we so caught up on names on prestige? Why are we not more interested in what these actual places or products have to offer, are made of, or how they affect us?