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I've been thinking about how universities rebrand themselves. I find it interesting.
Recently, the Illinois Institute of Technology, known as IIT, decided to rebrand itself as Illinois Tech, a name it once went by. I've noticed a number of flagship public universities have chosen to rebrand themselves by dropping the city name from their names. An example of that would the University of Missouri at Columbia which went back to its old name, the University of Missouri, to better reflect its statewide image. In the same state, Southwest Missouri State University felt it could project a more statewide image by becoming Missouri State University. The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, has cut back on referring to itself as UIUC, preferring to go with Illinois. I was also thinking about ideas of how other universities can rebrand themselves. For example, would it be a good idea for a school like Northern Illinois University (NIU) to rid itself of its directional school status by referring to itself as Norill?
Obviously I've been all over the place in the above paragraph. That's just my way of saying I'd like to open this up to any discussion of rebranding universities that people would like to contribute to. So whether it's an existing rebrand, a proposed one. best reasons for rebranding or the negatives in doing so....it's a wide open discussion. would love to hear what people think.
Case Western Reserve had "CWRU" on everything when I started there (pronounced Crew). Around when I graduated, it just put "Case" on everything, which I preferred, since that's what we call it anyway.
Looking at their website, they seem to have dialed back a little. I don't see "Case" without the rest of the school's name.
I go to CU Denver and a couple of years ago, it used to be called University of Colorado at Denver. I don't know if it's just me, but the "at" before the city and after the state makes it sound like an off brand, satellite campus of the main campus (which in some cases, it is). Now it's University of Colorado Denver, which makes it sound more independent (as long as the other schools in the university system also add the city, including the flagship campus). They added a mascot recently, Milo the Lynx, even though we don't really have sports teams.
I feel like when a university is just "university" plus the name of the state, it gives the impression that that school is the state's flagship university, which some universities may think that too.
Also on the Auraria Campus (CU Denver, a community college, and...) Metro State University of Denver used to be called Metro State College of Denver. They wanted to change it to Denver State University, but the nearby private school University of Denver opposed that. I don't mind either name, but I rarely see "city" + "state" + "university" named schools, except for Portland State University and some others.
USC is already known as a prestigious school, and is known as a very prestigious school in southern california. It is also known as a party/rich kids school too(unfortunately). I have noticed within the recent years that the school is trying to shy away from its party aspect and focus more so on academics.
I've been thinking about how universities rebrand themselves. I find it interesting.
Recently, the Illinois Institute of Technology, known as IIT, decided to rebrand itself as Illinois Tech, a name it once went by. I've noticed a number of flagship public universities have chosen to rebrand themselves by dropping the city name from their names. An example of that would the University of Missouri at Columbia which went back to its old name, the University of Missouri, to better reflect its statewide image. In the same state, Southwest Missouri State University felt it could project a more statewide image by becoming Missouri State University. The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, has cut back on referring to itself as UIUC, preferring to go with Illinois. I was also thinking about ideas of how other universities can rebrand themselves. For example, would it be a good idea for a school like Northern Illinois University (NIU) to rid itself of its directional school status by referring to itself as Norill?
Obviously I've been all over the place in the above paragraph. That's just my way of saying I'd like to open this up to any discussion of rebranding universities that people would like to contribute to. So whether it's an existing rebrand, a proposed one. best reasons for rebranding or the negatives in doing so....it's a wide open discussion. would love to hear what people think.
I think it's a very interesting topic. I know that IIT (an excellent engineering school) constantly got confused with ITT (the for-profit vocational school), so the "Illinois Tech" branding could bring more awareness.
Also, I write a blog that has focused on college conference realignment for the past few years and school branding is a constant topic. For example, would the University of Central Florida (the second largest university in the country by enrollment behind only Arizona State) be getting more attention as a Big 12 or other power conference candidate if it were called, say, "Florida Tech", the "University of Orlando" or the "University of Florida at Orlando" as opposed to having a directional school name? Note that I always define a "directional school" as a non-flagship public school with a direction in its name. (As a result, the University of Southern California is decidedly NOT a "directional school" as an elite private school.) There is not a single school fitting that directional school definition in the 66 schools in the power conferences (including Notre Dame). There are a few "city" schools (e.g. Louisville and Pitt in the ACC), but absolutely no directional schools at all. The branding certainly seems to matter in the sports context (note that even Northern Illinois is using "NIU" in all of its branding now in order to de-emphasize the "Northern" direction in its name) and it could certainly apply in the overall academic context.
Last edited by Frank the Tank; 04-06-2016 at 11:39 AM..
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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The big one I am most familiar with is changing the John F Kennedy School of Government to the Harvard Kennedy School. It's officially still the former, and of course "branding" wasn't what was used to describe the process, but it was interesting and to take advantage of one of their strongest attributes.
Southwest Texas State University renamed itself Texas State University - San Marcos. They have since dropped the city name. They had originally planned to have multiple Texas State Universities just like there are multiple University of Houstons, University of Texases, and Texas A&Ms; but, there haven't been any new schools in the system and the existing ones have unique names.
I assumed this thread was about the George Mason Law School naming snafu.
I was 95% sure that that was an April Fools' joke- apparently not. How do you not catch that immediately?
Also, if I had a dollar for every time I called IIT "ITT Tech" or have called it "ITT" to an IIT student's face, I could buy...a decent bottle of wine or something. There's is an actual IIT train stop and back when I used to pass it, I always got those horrible ITT Tech commercials stuck in my head!
I think my favorite re-branding story is the College of New Jersey, which decided to change it's name after 200 years to Princeton University. Nearby Trenton State College decided to change it's name, 100 years after that, to The College of New Jersey, which made some of the Princeton alums upset.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank the Tank
I think it's a very interesting topic. I know that IIT (an excellent engineering school) constantly got confused with ITT (the for-profit vocational school), so the "Illinois Tech" branding could bring more awareness.
I actually think of the IIT in India, which are a bunch of top-notch engineering schools that send tons of their graduates to US universities for graduate school. I'm in a technical field and have met a bunch of people from the Indian IIT but not yet anyone from the American one!
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