Everyone a winner as Harvard takes in model student

It is hard at first to see why supermodel Tyra Banks is attending Harvard Business School

SHE IS beautiful, rich and famous. She has two television shows, one of which is named after her. She has her own foundation that helps deprived girls. She has been to bed with Barack Obama. She is taking a course at Harvard Business School (HBS) on how to be an entrepreneur.

All morning I've been attempting to make sense of Tyra Banks' achievements but there is one detail that keeps tripping me up. It's not the fact that the supermodel bedded the president – as, in truth, she only went to bed with someone pretending to be him while she pretended to be Michelle for a photo shoot in Harper's Bazaar.

The bit that I can’t make any sense of is the news that she has enrolled at HBS.

There are three reasons people pay through the nose to go there. Some want to learn how to make money. But Tyra knows how to do that already. Some want to meet people who will help them make money. But Tyra’s dance card is already full enough with business contacts – her boyfriend has been called the most successful black investment banker in the US.

And some go because they hope employers will think the Harvard badge is worth paying extra for. But Tyra is not going to be applying for any job so this doesn’t apply either.

Tyra may be doing something entirely novel. She may have enrolled purely and simply because she believes she will learn something.

The course she has registered on is the owner/president management programme, which consists of a mere three weeks a year for three years at a total cost of almost $100,000 – or about $2,000 per day.

To get an idea what this buys, I watched a video in which one of the professors, Lynda Applegate, drones on in front of a flow chart on which arrows representing “strategy”, “value” and “capabilities” are linked together in a circle. I sincerely hope Tyra will have the wit to see that such things are more vacuous than virtuous.

To get this dreary prof out of my mind, I then watched a clip on YouTube of Tyra herself in action on America's Next Top Model.

To one contestant she says in a voice like honey: “I admire your emotion right now.” To another she lets rip: “How dare you! Stop it! Learn something from this!”

Both carrots and sticks are things of beauty. She is sweet and terrifying and entirely charismatic. Tyra should be teaching Lynda something about leadership – not vice versa.

At the very least the model will have the chance to learn a whole new language. Here is how she currently expresses herself on Twitter, talk sufficiently engaging to have got more than 2.6 million followers. “BellyButton talk time! I used to be outtie, now I’m innie. Weird. Maybe I am an alien ... U outtie or innie? N how often u clean it?”

It’s quite a stretch from belly buttons to the language spoken by her classmates. One alumnus is quoted on HBS’s website saying: “The interaction with fellow attendees on a personal level...facilitated powerful interlearning.” Another attests that it helped him see his business from a “globalistic point of view”.

Even if Tyra can pick up the argot in a few weeks, I’m worried what will happen as a result. If she tries talking on TV about globalistic views and facilitating powerful interlearning she may find ratings collapse and that she is out on her pretty ear.

There is only one way in which Tyra’s trip to Harvard makes any sense. She never went to college and it’s possible that, like many self-made people, she feels that there is something she has missed out on.

In the Harper's Bazaarshoot both members of the faux first couple were wearing Harvard sweatshirts. Maybe Tyra just longs for one for real. Going to HBS puts Polyfilla in that chip on her shoulder.

In the end this story is about brands. While nothing tangible has been created, everyone’s brand gets miraculously enhanced. A model sits in a classroom for a few weeks while people talk tediously, and thus she extends her brand of beauty to include brains too. Harvard Business School’s fusty brand, meanwhile, gets a frosting of glamour – while it pockets cash from another sucker.

And what of Tyra’s course mates, who are mostly male and mostly plain? She has posted a picture of them on Twitter and written: “Enriching my mind with these amazing buddies! They are sooooo intelligent! Geniuses!!!”

The geniuses are smiling more broadly than is normal in class photos. Value appears to have been created for them too. Tyra at Harvard is win-win-win all the way. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)