Will US colleges’ brand power survive falling standards?
From our US edition
Nike. Supreme. Ralph Lauren. Abercrombie and Fitch. Harvard and Yale. On the streets of Budapest, style-conscious teenagers have collapsed the distinction between the Ivy League and streetwear. Maybe Americans still balk at wearing the logo of schools they didn’t get into, but the market for collegiate apparel in Eastern Europe is not limited to alumni, students and ambitious high-schoolers. Even kids with no interest in (or chance of) going to Harvard are drawn by the power of its name. Meanwhile, American higher education is being convulsed by a social-justice revolution that upends the basis of these schools’ claims to exclusivity.
