Brand New U

The University of Waterloo is experiencing a wicked backlash over their new logo concept. I'll be the first to admit, it's a little laser-y. But isn't that what UW is going for in terms of their policies and corporate practices?

The negative reaction has spawned a large facebook group (you know how I love those) as a discussion forum to blather on endlessly about it, and there's even an "executive blog" by business student Evan Thor ( I know him!) on the National Post website about it. People don't like it. Here's why:

It cheapens the brand. At least, that's the argument. It's not academic. It's not scholarly. It doesn't reflect the tradition of higher education that people revere in a university insitution. Well, guess what, neither does the University of Waterloo. Their policies for encouraging innovation, churning Masters' students through the revolving door of grant quotas, and their corporate partnerships do more to undermine the value of higher education than the logo does.

It's not like they're the only ones, though. My Alma Mater, UniGoo, for example is just slightly behind the curve - their logo is still largely intact, but has already sold its soul to the biomed sector. To survive the coup the profitable sciences have perpetrated against universities, the humanities have turned MA programmes into cashcow versions of a victory lap (a 5th year of undergrad studies) just to keep their department budgets liquid.

So before students and alumni get all up-in-arms about a new jpeg that represents the university, maybe they ought to think about the actual university, because from where I stand, the new logo is pretty faithful to what the University of Waterloo, like so many others, has become: a marketing gimick.