In education, brands matter.
Education folks don’t like to talk about that because it undercuts the feel good idea that where you go to school doesn’t matter, when the truth is that it does – and quite a bit. In fact, for many students and prospective students, where you go is all that matters. It’s why, for example, the most expensive education options are the most in-demand. People will find a way to pay for Harvard, no matter what it costs. The brand justifies the cost. The brand is the purchase. The education is incidental.
BrandEd, which launched in 2019, is all-in on the proposition that brand is the educational value proposition.
History says they’re almost certainly right.
In the process, BrandEd is poised to re-teach traditional schools a valuable lesson, perhaps invent a new learning model and probably bank some serious returns.
Already, the BrandEd high profile portfolio includes licensing and management deals with names such as The New York Times, Sotheby’s, City Football Group (for Americans, that includes Manchester City soccer club, which just won the Premier League, the FA Cup and Champions League titles). BrandEd also recently signed a deal with Condé Nast, bringing mastheads such as Vogue, Wired and Architectural Digest into the fold.
Many of these brands already had education arms before BrandEd – The New York Times, Condé Nast, and Sotheby’s did. All the schools include heavy leadership and instruction from the people, the experts from the nameplate companies on the door. Journalists at The New York Times, for example, teach many of the courses at the school.
“The challenge and opportunity,” said BrandEd CEO Michael Chung, “is that designing curriculum and running schools does not neatly fit into the core competency of many of these highly influential and highly successful brands. They’re all top companies in their sectors and are exceptionally good at running their core businesses, but they can benefit from a partner that is completely focused on building schools befitting their brand stature.”
You may be inclined to think that a for-profit company running schools with big business brands has plenty of potential pitfalls. It’s a mindset Chung understands. “The sector has had its problems, no question,” he says, “but we’re doing things very differently and our mission, dynamics and ethics lead us in a different direction, away from the reputational issues that some other companies face.”
For one, Chung says, BrandEd is owned and run by a family investment office, not a traditional venture capital outfit. “It means we don’t have traditional investors looking over our shoulders every day, pressuring us to quickly turn a profit. With patient capital we can take a long view and build slowly and intentionally—which is exactly what is needed to build high quality education programs,” he said.
Another factor that leans against the quick-buck, for-profit temptation is the brands themselves. It’s pretty unlikely that the brand custodians at places such as Vogue or Sotheby’s will let someone use their names to turn out junk, no matter how profitable. In the long run, business brands know that’s a losing gambit. Though it’s something many education brands have been slow to internalize or forgotten altogether.
Another key detail in the BrandEd ethos is accreditation. In every case, Chung says, BrandEd schools will be fully accredited to grant degrees. Some are already. Sotheby’s Institute of Art is, for example. As those accreditations grow, BrandEd may partner with existing schools to provide some elements of core curriculum that are beyond the sweet-spot of the company or its brand partners. Chung describes the arduous and lengthy process of accreditation as “a moat” that will, in the long run, protect BrandEd properties from future encroachment.
Seen from the other side of that moat – the accredited, incumbent schools that already grant degrees – these new, high-brand neighbors are likely to get some inquisitive stares. High-brand, accredited schools aren’t new. But the brands being independent, non-education business names, that is new. Imagine a New York Stock Exchange school or Disney school, fully empowered to grant the same degrees as any college anywhere. Injecting that level of branding could shake the establishment a bit.
That’s just fine with Chung. Though it isn’t his primary mission, helping schools improve through competition is an intentional byproduct of the BrandEd dynamic.
More at the forefront of the mission is broadening the acceptance of following passion in education and training. “We want to make it not just accepted, but actually highly beneficial for people to purse passion industries such as fashion or sports through their education choices,” Chung said. “With the right training and networks, passions become opportunities. We’re already getting our graduates real jobs in aspirational industries like art and fashion,” he said. “If we can get jobs for our graduates in the art market, think of what we can do elsewhere.”
With the passion education, the accreditation, demonstrating the reality of brand value, and the jobs all on one side of the ledger, the financial side of the ledger looks promising too.
Chung won’t say specifically how profitable BrandEd schools are, or the returns they project. But he says they generally don’t get involved unless they see a clear path to building a ten million dollar program. He cites a summer, pre-college program run by the School of The New York Times which he says will have about 2,000 enrolled students, with a before-discount sticker price of $6,000 each for the chance to jump-start their career awareness, acquire skills and collect contacts.
When you begin counting the names with your fingers – Vogue, Wired, Sotheby’s – the numbers add up quickly.
“Either we’re crazy or we’re on to something very big here,” said Chung.
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