The Race Is On

To fight back, the world's established homes of higher learning are launching international ad campaigns—something once unthinkable to these venerable institutions. In February, the United States announced that it would spend $1 million to expand its music-video-esque marketing campaign from China to India next year. In Britain, 79 percent of colleges and universities are increasing their marketing and recruitment efforts abroad this year, according to a Universities UK survey released in March. Last month, the French government declared university reform a top priority, vowing to spend €5 billion by 2012 on modernization. In Europe, the much-touted Bologna process promises to standardize higher-education degrees across the entire continent by 2010, giving an internationally recognizable seal of approval to the continent's idiosyncratic diplomas.

Through all these changes, at least one thing has remained constant: the world's biggest name institutions are still everyone's first choice. America's Ivy League universities have huge amounts of cash, and they and Britain's Oxbridge retain huge cachet, which help them continue to procure everything from the finest libraries and laboratories to the best professors and students. "The competition is hotting up, but for the absolute top universities, we can stand tall," says Tim Lankester, president of Oxford's Corpus Christi College, who recently stepped down after three years as the chairman of Oxford's admissions committee. "I don't want to sound complacent, but we offer the best."

But even Britain's best can't compete with the multibillion-dollar treasuries of the Ivy League. At the beginning of this school year, Harvard used its endowment of $28 billion (more than all of Britain's universities combined) to make a move few other schools could afford, announcing that henceforth all students from families making less than $60,000 a year would enjoy a completely free ride. That has made Harvard one of the cheapest options for working- and middle-class students, assuming they can get in, of course.

At the tier just below the very top, however, America and Europe are losing their monopoly on prestigious degrees. "Australia, Canada, Russia and Hong Kong are all higher-education hot spots now," says Catharine Stimpson, dean of New York University. "Everyone wants to be everywhere." And, ultimately, that is exactly where the most successful educational establishments of the future will enable their scholars to be. Get ready for more U.S. students making Beijin— home-and more Chinese students cheerleading in Boston.

© 2007