Next stop, Havahd

Those of you who've been to Boston know that sound. You're on the T, cruising along Mass. Ave. underground, and you hear that announcement and you get that special feeling, knowing that you're about to arrive at one of the premier seats of higher learning in the world.

And there's no reason that feeling should only be the province of a hyper-educated elite. Ever since studying abroad was reintroduced in the 1980s, Chinese people have had a major jones for Harvard and the rest of the Ivies. There are tons of books with Harvard as the subject, and especially popular among those are ones that tell about how a Chinese student managed to get in or raise a kid that got into Harvard.

This English training institute, called "Harvard Learning," attempts to capitalize on the Harvard brand. The maroon color (Harvard's official colors), the pictures of what appears to be the Harvard church and Harvard Yard all seem to say that "yes, you've arrived in academe's Promised Land." And there to greet you are Peter, Lucy, and Mary, the North American, English, and Australian robots teachers that let you choose what kind of accent you want to listen to. Click on the above link to try it out! At Harvard Learning, you get it your way.

The school is actually located in Beijing. A similar school in Zhengzhou, Henan, uses "Yale" to promote its English and test-taking (GRE, IELTS, SAT) classes. What appears to be a Shanghai company uses Oxford in their name for yet another English training institute. This is old hat, especially for people who are familiar with the English teaching thing, and we understand the importance of "branding" and marketing. Nevertheless, it's still a bit amusing to see just how many names are based on "prestigious" names from the US and UK, especially when they don't have anything to do with education.

So, if you need a water heater, we hear Princeton water heaters offer a good bang for the buck. Stanford Weekly is a good source of business information, for example on companies such as Suzhou's Stanford Instruments Co. For a reliable forklift you can find one at this Hangzhou company, which also uses "Yale" in its name.

Photo from Harvard Learning.