Branding is important. It can make or break your reputation, and be the reason people do or don’t trust you. Usually it’s best to keep it consistent, but a rebrand done well can be revitalising for a company, or, in today’s case, a university.
The University of Bolton was once a well respected technical college and began awarding degrees in 1990. Since then it has graduated tens of thousands of students, and has one of the highest rates of student satisfaction in the country. Or we should say it had, as the University of Bolton is, technically, no more. From now on it will be known as the University of Greater Manchester, as the Office for Students (OfS), the higher education regulator, has granted the uni permission to use the name.
Although this may appear to be an innocuous change, some people were very against it, arguing that it could allow for the institution to be easily confused with the bigger University of (normal) Manchester. Despite these objections, an OfS investigation found only 36 percent of respondents felt that the names could be misleading.
Bolton council leader Nick Peel also said that keeping the town’s name in the institution’s title was ‘non-negotiable’. Obviously, he was overruled.
Professor George Holmes, who is the current vice-chancellor of the university, has said that he believes ‘the new title will more accurately portray what the university has become in recent years; serving and operating in the whole area of Greater Manchester, not just one borough within it’.
He added: ‘Our commitment to Bolton is unswerving and we are committed to continue to be part of the fabric of the local community.’
Bolton isn’t the only northern uni to get a bit of a rebrand recently. The University of Central Lancashire, based in Preston, is now simply the University of Lancashire. It has not moved to a less central location, it just felt that the name change would ‘better cement our brand position and build on our recruitment efforts both nationally and internationally’.
The name changes will be finalised before the next academic year begins in 2025, so you’ve still got a few months to adjust to the changes and accept the inevitable.
Higher education with Time Out
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