In the competitive world of business, brands fight hard to present themselves as distinctive. Using propositions which derive from a point of difference, actual or perceptual. Think VW. Red Bull. Or more recently, Greggs.

Most of our universities do the exact opposite. They cling to their idea of a single generic ideal so fiercely you couldn’t slide a sheet of paper between them. If you don’t believe me, check out a few websites and play ‘Swap the Logo’. 

This is bad enough in a competitive world but when you delve deeper, it gets worse. You discover that in the race to conform, university rhetoric is often based more on what they aspire to be, rather than on truths about what they are in reality.

Here are just a few examples.

Many lower tariff institutions, our former pre-92 polytechnics, are so in awe of the established company they joined when they were re-named universities that they portray themselves unconvincingly as Russell Group wannabees. Hence the embarrassing sight of universities with diddly-squat research income claiming to be ‘research-intensive’ with teaching that is ‘research-led’. Who are they kidding?

They ignore the uncomfortable truths that 85% of their income derives from tuition fees and grants, and that their students care more about the quality of their education and career preparation than how many stars their lecturers got in the last REF.

This all stems of course from the snobbery, rife among academics who believe that research is on a higher plane than teaching. And ergo, that people on teaching-only contracts belong to a lower caste and should be treated accordingly.

Just as ‘modern’ universities pretend that they are research-intensive universities, so many high-ranking research-intensive universities pretend that they deliver a high standard of teaching. They don’t, for the simple reason that their academic culture values quality of research over quality of teaching, and that the focus on the former often comes at the expense of the latter. 

Click on the ‘Student Satisfaction’ tab on the latest Complete University Guide and you’ll see that 10 Russell Group universities are ranked lower than 100. Conversely, the majority of the Top Ten on this measure are otherwise lowly 92s. 

It was no surprise then that only eight Russell Group universities gained a gold in the latest TEF. And equally no surprise that the Russell Group’s response was to attack the TEF’s methodology, saying ‘Our members provide an outstanding student experience where teaching is enhanced by access to world-class research and facilities.’ Many of their students clearly don’t agree.

So we have many low-ranked universities pretending to be research-intensive and many high-ranked universities pretending to be education-intensive. And a few outstanding exceptions such as St Andrews, Bath and Lancaster (all, by strange coincidence, high-ranking non-Russell Group members) who manage the difficult balance of delivering well on both fronts. 

Why does any of this matter to me as a marketer? 

Mostly I think because it’s evidence that universities have still not learned how to compete. Basing your appeal on a proposition which clearly lacks adjacency to the truth is clearly not strategically clever. Fighting on someone else’s ground is not just unwise, it’s invariably ineffectual. 

Better that universities celebrate their differences, encourage distinctiveness and market themselves as highly individual institutions more honestly. 

It's not just more moral, it’s more likely to work.