Putting Harvard on the Map

When Nashville lawyer V. Michael Fox advertises on late-night television he makes it clear he's been to Harvard.

The Nashville Law School graduate who calls himself "DUI Mike" is pictured holding a certificate of achievement he received from an organization that is unaffiliated with the University but holds its annual conference on the grounds of Harvard Law School.

Although advertising with the Harvard name is a well-established practice in many places, Fox says that the technique hasn't been too helpful in the South where fewer people recognize the Harvard moniker, much less associate it with any sort of greatness.

Despite running the same advertisement since December 1996, he says that only once since then has a client mentioned the Harvard connection--however tenuous.

"They just don't care," says Fox of his Tennessee clientele.

Judging from Fox's experience, it's not always easy to predict what the reaction to the Harvard name will be outside the Northeast. In some areas, a Harvard degree is a commonplace resume asset, while in some less Crimson-populated places in the world, it can draw a comparison to royalty.

A Different Old Boys Club

Harvard Business School alum Linda R. Kartoz-Doochin moved to Tennessee after graduating in 1979 and quickly learned that having a Harvard MBA did little to ease her transition into Southern culture.

In fact, Kartoz-Doochin says her HBS affiliation was something she had to "overcome" when she looked for work. Being a working woman who was educated outside of the more traditional Southern university circuit didn't exactly help her job opportunities.

"When I first came down I was a real rarity, if not to say an oddity," she says

But even 20 years later, Kartoz-Doochin, now president of the Harvard Club of Middle Tennessee, says she is still surprised at the way some people in her region perceive a Harvard education.

While high schools seniors in New York City or Boston apply in droves to the College, convincing bright students from Tennessee to go to Harvard is more challenging because of the strong ties some feel to their parents' alma maters.

"People want to go where their daddy went," she says--schools like Vanderbilt or the University of Alabama.

That means the Harvard network is smaller and less powerful when it comes to helping Harvard grads land jobs in parts of the South and Southwest.

The fact that the University of Texas and Texas A & M are public schools regarded as educational powerhouses discourages many Texas students from looking out of state for their college education, according to James F. Hughes III '79, president of the Harvard Club of Houston.

And while the Harvard name can be helpful when finding work, Hughes says there is some disadvantage to graduating from a school in Cambridge--and not in the region.

"We don't have the same infrastructure and network [as the Texas universities]" he says. "It's growing, but we don't have that."

And for Norma L. Moore '68, being outside what she calls the "good 'ole boys" network that was comprised of graduates of the state university system made her job search significantly more difficult.

"When I lived in Texas, it was hard to get a job if you didn't go to school in Texas," says Moore, who is now president of the Rocky Mountain Harvard Club, based in Denver. "There, if you went to Harvard, people just knew it as somewhere that wasn't in Texas."

And even in Colorado, New York native Barbara L. Connors '69 says she was surprised by the contrast in perception of the Harvard moniker.

"When you say you go to Harvard in New York, everyone sort of snores, but here, it cuts both ways," Connors says.

Connors says that when she tells people that she graduated from Harvard, about half think she's either smart or a bit obnoxious. The other half , she says, "just draw a blank."

"Mainly around here there are lots of people who've never heard of [Harvard]," she says.

Fast Track to Royalty

But clear across the Pacific Ocean, the significance of the Harvard name can be taken out of proportion. "If you went to Harvard, or graduated from there, you are automatically elevated to some sort of 'elite' realm," says Misasha C. Suzuki '99, a Japanese citizen who works for JP Morgan in Tokyo. "Harvard is the key to basically opening up whatever you want in Japan."

Suzuki says credentials from what many Japanese perceive as the best university in the world elevate Harvard graduates to an almost "super-human" status.

"I often get compared to Masako [Owada '85], the Crown Princess [of Japan] who graduated from Harvard," Suzuki says. "They somehow think that I am destined to marry royalty or something along those lines."

And although a Harvard diploma may have its strongest draw in Japan, other international alums say Harvard has a universal draw.

The rule of thumb is that "the further you get away from Boston, the more famous [the Harvard name] becomes," says David G. Pumphrey, a 1970 HBS graduate and current president of the Harvard Club of Australia.

In Australia, he says Harvard is seen as one of the three best universities in the world, along with Cambridge and Oxford, both in England. And in the land down under, the Harvard grads stick together.

"There's no question that the network is very, very strong," he says.

Unlike in parts of the south and southwest, the Harvard network is also strong in parts of the U.S. West Coast, leading to a strong recognition of the Harvard name.

David W. Salzberg, president of Roth-Young, an executive recruiting firm located outside Seattle, says that although the Harvard name has a stronger pull on the East Coast, a diploma from Harvard still carries an attractive "mystique."

For large "mainstream" firms such as Proctor & Gamble, Salzberg says going to Harvard almost always boosts a candidate's chances at getting hired.

"Usually it gives them, rather subtly, a few notches up on the ladder," Salzberg says, adding that candidates with an MBA from the Business School can even expect to receive $10,000 to $20,000 more than the normal salary range.

But that gap is narrowing.

Salzberg says that as the high tech industry continues to grow in the West, the demand for job candidates with the right skills has started to override the significance of a prestigious college education, even at Harvard.

"It's not so much where you went to school or what degree you have," he says. "It's what your skill set is."

He says the industry is seeing more and more high school computer whizzes who opt to go to work rather than college, spurred by a newfound mentality that is constantly reinforced by the media.

"How important is a college education when the richest guy in the world dropped out of Harvard?" quips Salzberg.