Will SDSU ever change it's name? « Thread Started on May 21, 2012, 10:42pm »
Yes, this is a dumb thread but it's the off season and nothing else is going on except realignment rumors. Do you think San Diego State University will always be the name of our university? I got to thinking about this recently when thinking about our chances in the realignment musical chairs. The City State name just seems to stick out like a sore thumb when compared to just about any other school from a traditional conference.
SDSU has outgrown it's regional state university label and are now the only CSU in the system considered a "national" university by US News and World Report. In this same publication we are now a Tier 1 school and have probably made more improvement in the last ten years than any other university in the country We get 70K applicants a year and our freshman class exceeds 7 out of 12 PAC-12 schools. We are supposed to have 45k students by 2025 and our major sports are now players on the national stage. While I love the name of our school I could definitely see a change being made in the future to a more traditional name with either the city or the State part being dropped.
The California State University? California State College? ^^^ call me nuts but I think we'd be looked at much more favorably in the expansion craze with a name like one of those above.
San Diego College?
Again, this is just for discussion during the slow season, I don't expect anything like this to happen any time soon. Just wanted to see everyone else's thoughts.
Interesting articles on some universities that have changed their names. The bleacher report even mentions SDSU specifically as a candidate to become California State. Yes, I actually posted a bleacher report link...
Re: Will SDSU ever change it's name? « Reply #5 on May 21, 2012, 11:25pm »
the last time the name changed, "Love University" got some support partly because the prez' name was Malcome Love and partly because, well it was the era of love n' stuff
Joined: Feb 2011 Gender: Male Posts: 1,114 Location: San Diego
Re: Will SDSU ever change it's name? « Reply #6 on May 21, 2012, 11:26pm »
Forgive me for interrupting the snark to offer up a serious (or, at least, semi-serious) answer...
It's already gone through 4 name changes in its history... Our beloved SDSU began life as "San Diego Normal School", eventually becoming part of the State system as "San Diego State Teacher's College". When it grew beyond the role of educating teachers, it became "San Diego State College". When several of the State Colleges grew to the point where they offered graduate schools, including PhD's, albeit in conjunction with UC schools. For one brief year we were "California State University, San Diego" (as it happens it happened to be the year I graduated, so that's what's on my @#$%!!! diploma...), becoming officially "San Diego State University" the next year after much protest and petitioning from a handful of schools (San Jose and Fresno among them) that preferred the old name structure.
Therefore, it could happen again, but it would almost certainly have to be something other than what you mentioned in the original post. "California State University" is already part of the name of most of the Universities in the Cal State system, and would cause confusion and much resentment as it would imply that we were the "Big cheese" and they were satellite campuses of us.
To have "College" as part of the name is out of the question, as we have far outgrown it as we evolved into a University (and now have several "Colleges" within the University itself.
"San Diego University" would only cause confusion with "University of San Diego" (and if you think we get our hackles up when we've occasionally been confused with South Dakota State University, to be confused with our "little sister" school would cause meltdowns of Chernobyl proportions!)
IMNSHO, the only way I can see the name changing is if the "Charter" concept, speculated about in another thread, were to come into play and we became effectively independent of the CSU system, and the decision was made to create a name completely unrelated to our State College/State University heritage. What direction that could take might go in any number of directions and would probably involve (much to everyone's horror...) a massive and expensive study by marketing consultants.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled snarkfest... Carry on.
Forgive me for interrupting the snark to offer up a serious (or, at least, semi-serious) answer...
It's already gone through 4 name changes in its history... Our beloved SDSU began life as "San Diego Normal School", eventually becoming part of the State system as "San Diego State Teacher's College". When it grew beyond the role of educating teachers, it became "San Diego State College". When several of the State Colleges grew to the point where they offered graduate schools, including PhD's, albeit in conjunction with UC schools. For one brief year we were "California State University, San Diego" (as it happens it happened to be the year I graduated, so that's what's on my @#$%!!! diploma...), becoming officially "San Diego State University" the next year after much protest and petitioning from a handful of schools (San Jose and Fresno among them) that preferred the old name structure.
Therefore, it could happen again, but it would almost certainly have to be something other than what you mentioned in the original post. "California State University" is already part of the name of most of the Universities in the Cal State system, and would cause confusion and much resentment as it would imply that we were the "Big cheese" and they were satellite campuses of us.
To have "College" as part of the name is out of the question, as we have far outgrown it as we evolved into a University (and now have several "Colleges" within the University itself.
"San Diego University" would only cause confusion with "University of San Diego" (and if you think we get our hackles up when we've occasionally been confused with South Dakota State University, to be confused with our "little sister" school would cause meltdowns of Chernobyl proportions!)
IMNSHO, the only way I can see the name changing is if the "Charter" concept, speculated about in another thread, were to come into play and we became effectively independent of the CSU system, and the decision was made to create a name completely unrelated to our State College/State University heritage. What direction that could take might go in any number of directions and would probably involve (much to everyone's horror...) a massive and expensive study by marketing consultants.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled snarkfest... Carry on.
Thanks for the response. I was thinking about the Charter concept being the instigator for a name change as well but knew enough people would be pissed off enough with the thread that I'm glad that your the one that brought it up.
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Adam Smith
Re: Will SDSU ever change it's name? « Reply #9 on May 22, 2012, 12:15am »
As a San Diego native, I would be more than a little pissed if they ever removed San Diego from my school's name......unless you're talking Zuma State University!
"America loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser" - George Patton
Joined: Jul 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 5,180 Location: Fallbrook, CA
Re: Will SDSU ever change it's name? « Reply #15 on May 22, 2012, 12:41am »
SDSU will always be SDSU. Period.
By the way, two well-known schools nationally used to be called something else. As I recall, those would be Rice Univ., which used to be Rice Institute, and Auburn, which used to be Alabama Poly. I'm sure you will want to include those factoids in your personal database.
Forgive me for interrupting the snark to offer up a serious (or, at least, semi-serious) answer...
It's already gone through 4 name changes in its history... Our beloved SDSU began life as "San Diego Normal School", eventually becoming part of the State system as "San Diego State Teacher's College". When it grew beyond the role of educating teachers, it became "San Diego State College". When several of the State Colleges grew to the point where they offered graduate schools, including PhD's, albeit in conjunction with UC schools. For one brief year we were "California State University, San Diego" (as it happens it happened to be the year I graduated, so that's what's on my @#$%!!! diploma...), becoming officially "San Diego State University" the next year after much protest and petitioning from a handful of schools (San Jose and Fresno among them) that preferred the old name structure.
Therefore, it could happen again, but it would almost certainly have to be something other than what you mentioned in the original post. "California State University" is already part of the name of most of the Universities in the Cal State system, and would cause confusion and much resentment as it would imply that we were the "Big cheese" and they were satellite campuses of us.
To have "College" as part of the name is out of the question, as we have far outgrown it as we evolved into a University (and now have several "Colleges" within the University itself.
"San Diego University" would only cause confusion with "University of San Diego" (and if you think we get our hackles up when we've occasionally been confused with South Dakota State University, to be confused with our "little sister" school would cause meltdowns of Chernobyl proportions!)
IMNSHO, the only way I can see the name changing is if the "Charter" concept, speculated about in another thread, were to come into play and we became effectively independent of the CSU system, and the decision was made to create a name completely unrelated to our State College/State University heritage. What direction that could take might go in any number of directions and would probably involve (much to everyone's horror...) a massive and expensive study by marketing consultants.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled snarkfest... Carry on.
This. Except Fresno probably wasn't one of the schools working for the name change. When they decided to allow schools to drop the CSU and revert to the State name, they only offered it to schools that had carried the state name before. Fresno chose to stick with the CSU label. This upset the fans of their sports teams so they adjusted it so that the athletics use the Fresno State moniker while the school is still CSU Fresno (maybe not still but at the time, I don't know if they have changed it since).
I remember doing a bunch of research on this a few months ago and actually had a list of all the schools that kept their State moniker. Might be in the archives somewhere.