The strategic planning report for the “Global Dartmouth” working group (June 2012), released today, makes six proposals, including this one:

6. Rename Dartmouth for international audiences, by:
-Using “Dartmouth University” or some equivalent to refer to the institution as a whole.
-Using “Dartmouth College” to refer to the undergraduate school of Arts and Sciences.
-Maintaining existing labels for other schools.

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03.07.2013 Reactions:

One must presume that the working group is not completely tone-deaf and is instead exaggerating for effect. If international public relations is such a problem, then the solution is more or better public relations. The facts that Imperial College London is at number 8 and King’s College London is at number 57 in the Times rankings tend to suggest that this is the case. Each of those “colleges” is a public research university ranked at least 60 places above Dartmouth.

If a name change really were needed for the international market, one would imagine that the first step would be to continue to deemphasize “College” (for example, “William & Mary” is listed as such by the Times) and the second step would be to add an explanatory tagline to the website and other publicity materials provided outside the U.S.:

On the other hand, if the proposal were taken seriously, this is how it would play out: the Board would announce, as part of the Sestercentennial¹The College of New Jersey, known colloquially as Princeton College, changed its name to Princeton University at its Sesquicentennial in 1896. It still polices the use of the College of New Jersey name. in 2019, that the arts and sciences undergraduate program would always be Dartmouth College but that the historic umbrella institution, which had never had a name of its own, would be called Dartmouth University.

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