Harvardland

The middle class Taiwanese parent is spending thousands of NTS a month sending their children to afterschool English classes with names such as Harvardland. Harvardland just about says it all -- it's about the brand, it's about Harvard, which is not just a university, not just an education, a standard, a campus, it is a land -- a golden land of opportunity and big bucks that will open up naturally to the English speaker. The owners of Harvardland are canny indeed. They can avoid piracy charges because of their clever generalization of Harvard over an entire land -- Harvard -- land. It's not Harvard after all.

A local kindergarten in the area is called Stanford. Not Stanfordland.

It just goes to show that in the war of international branding for higher education, my alma mater, Yale, is losing.