A phrase from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet states: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” This cannot be any further from the truth in the corporate world. The name of a corporation is its face, so setting a brand requires a lot of work and money. But what happens when something goes wrong? The way to deal with corporate problems often involves re-branding, changing the name and the face of the corporation. It works as customers usually do not check the history of a company before buying its products or using its services. It simply works.
With the Universities today run according to the corporate model, it was only a matter of time until re-branding came to the academic world. And leading Universities, like Harvard, seem to be embracing the model. Since 2013 article in Harvard Crimson, big Universities became a focus of investigations of many leading newspapers and politicians. Harvard, in particular, has been a focus of a brewing controversy. The University with the largest endowment of any university in the world, has got its name associated with the person who was not, in fact, the founder of Harvard University. As reported, in the very recent internal investigation by Harvard Crimson, John Harvard cannot be the founder of the school, because the Massachusetts Colony’s vote had come two years prior to Harvard’s bequest (compare this to Ezra Cornell’s founding of Cornell University). This led several prominent Massachusetts politicians to suggest that the University will be returned to the ownership by the Commonwealth with its name changed to University of Massachusetts, Cambridge. “We have a fantastic University system here in Massachusetts, with the flagship campus in Amherst,” said one of the prominent politicians who preferred not to be named, “Any University in the World would be proud to be a part of it.”
Returning a prominent private University to the ownership by the State is highly unusual nowadays and is probably highly specific to New England. With tightening budgets many states seek to privatize the Universities to remove them from their budget. For instance, there is a talk that a large public Midwestern school, Wayne State University, will soon change its owners and its name. Two prominent figures, W. Rooney and W. Gretzky, are rumored to work on acquiring the University and re-branding it as simply Wayne’s University. And the changes are rumored go even further. An external company Haleburton has already completed an assessment of the University’s strengths. The company noted WSU’s worldwide reputation in chemistry, physics and medicine and its Carnegie I research status, and recommended that the school should concentrate its efforts on graduating hockey, football, basketball and baseball players. “We are preparing our graduates to have highly successful careers. What job in the United States brings more money than the NFL or NHL player?” a member of WSU’s Academic Senate has been quoted in saying. “We are all excited about the change and looking forward to what else future would bring us.”
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