Every once in awhile it’s worth looking at other industries to see what you can learn from them and apply it to your own. In the case of higher education, I think it is time to look at airlines.

The obvious similarity here has to do with the difficulties both experience in branding. Airlines all deliver essentially the same experience – you get to the airport, go through security, pick a seat on one flying cigar tube and a few hours later you’re at another airport.  Similarly, universities provide generic experiences to students by offering the same selection of courses taught using the same techniques leading to the same qualifications. Branding is therefore about incredibly small differences in provision.

The two industries differ in a couple of respects, of course. One, universities are in the prestige business, so there’s no one to play the role of RyanAir or Southwest Airlines. Two, there’s no customer loyalty issue in higher education. Airlines fight for repeat business: universities don’t try to give you the same degree more than once. Sure, universities like to talk about being in the customer service industry, and earning loyalty for fundraising purposes, but that’s a somewhat different matter.

Differences aside, it’s a bit remarkable that universities haven’t gone the airline route to rebranding. Obviously, you can’t get profs to do Porter Airlines dress-chic, but is it too much to ask universities to build certain common themes into touchpoints with stakeholders? Why not make a university stand for something specific, like developing leadership skills or encouraging community service, and build it into various student interfaces: curriculum, residence programming, commencement speeches, etc. Building a distinct identity like this is the essence of branding; there’s no benefit to being sniffily post-modern about it if it condemns your institution to being “just another university.”

But forget branding: let’s talk alliances. Universitas 21 was an early attempt at getting institutions to link like airline alliances, but it was pretty weak.  The real money will be in creating a global superbrand (à la Star Alliance or Skyteam) not for domestic purposes, but for catching high-value international (primarily Asian) students. Imagine two institutions from Australia and England with significant overseas presences joining together to become a single institution for the purpose of creating a dozen or more campuses around the world. Remember when Monash wanted a campus on every continent? This is the way to do it. Throw in an ambitious American school with foreign designs (Cornell? Texas A&M?) and you’ve got a global powerhouse.

I give it three years, tops. Watching the feathers fly will be interesting indeed.