(Source: Harvard University)Just how powerful is the Harvard brand? What does it represent? Does the university still attract the best and brightest, and do graduates still dominate various professions?



A recent USA Today article explores these very questions. Here's an excerpt:

As Harvard prepares to confer degrees on yet another batch of graduates Thursday, academic experts scratch their heads at how this institution maintains its reputational dominance in an era of academic parity. But a marketer would understand the Harvard aura in a nanosecond: It's the ultimate brand, at least in the academic world.

"There isn't any doubt that brand matters and that Harvard is the prestige brand," says Stanley Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. "It's the Gucci of higher education, the most selective place."Read more here.