Ozzy Osboune Tech anyone?

20 September 2007
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UCE are “in the process” of changing their name, and they want Birmingham in the title as:

Research shows that universities that have the name of their location in their title are more easily recognised and remembered by potential applicants, increasing their ability to recruit able and committed students.

Wikipedia (so caveats apply) says that it will either be “Birmingham City University, Birmingham Chamberlain University or Birmingham Metropolitan University.”. My money is on Chamberlain, as Birmingham City University sounds like it’s a football academy, and Metropolitan sounds too Manchester. But, before they decide can you think of a better name? Birmingham Frank Skinner University sounds good to me – and he is an alumnus.

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  • Marian Hall

    cheeky upstarts trying to nick Chamberlain from Birmingham University where he’s had a big clock tower since the last millennium

  • http://peteashton.com Pete Ashton

    I’ve no idea whether this happened in Birmingham but when I lived in Southampton the Poly wanted to change it’s name from Southampton Poly to Southampton [something] Uni but the old and venerable Southampton Uni blocked them. They had to go for University of Solent, named after the patch of water between there and the Isle of Wight.

    I wonder if the redbrick Birmingham Uni will have a say in what UCE can be called. Would two Birmingham Uni’s be confusing?

  • http://peteashton.com Pete Ashton

    I just remembered something else about this story – given they couldn’t have Southampton they opted for Hampshire University but that was vetoed because it sounded better than Southampton. Notable that no-one’s wanting to call themselves “University of The West Midlands”…

  • http://www.jonbounds.co.uk bounder

    I never thought of how Brum Uni would react, but if it was normal trading laws there’d certainly be a case for “passing off”.

    >the name of their location in their title …

    Erm, mostly in Perry Barr, but some bits in town and the odd bit up by the Botanical Gardens University?

  • http://peteashton.com Pete Ashton

    Actually, it looks like they’re aiming to colonise Eastside, especially with the arts and media stuff…

  • http://focalplane.com Paul Ashton

    A quick look at wikipedia confirmed my surprisingly good distant memory that Aston University’s first name, as a university, was “University of Aston in Birmingham”. What wikipedia doesn’t mention is that it was previously a College of Advanced Technology (CAT for short). So UCE could follow the same logic and have the name “University of Perry Barr scattered all over Birmingham”.

  • Simon

    The three names listed at Wikipedia were distributed in a survey to all staff and students a few months ago. Birmingham University have objected to Chamberlain so forget that one. Met has been rumored over recent weeks, but that all changed in the last couple of days to Birmingham City University. Announcement rumoured on the 1st October 2007.

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