XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: peter@pmoylan.org   
      
   On 24/09/24 07:41, lar3ryca wrote:   
   > On 2024-09-23 06:50, Peter Moylan wrote:   
   >> On 23/09/24 16:16, Rich Ulrich wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> Texas Tech alumni were proud of their name and fought   
   >>> successfullly against the proposed renaming to "Texas State   
   >>> University";  thus, the odd variation, Texas Tech University.   
   >>   
   >> One Melbourne tertiary institution started in 1887 as the Working   
   >> Men's College. After a couple of name changes and mergers, it   
   >> became the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1960. When I   
   >> taught there in 1967 (only one subject, as a casual teacher) it   
   >> was considered to be the most prestigious technical college in the   
   >> state.   
   >>   
   >> It is now called RMIT University. On its web site, it is not easy   
   >> to discover what RMIT stands for.   
   >   
   > I had quite a chuckle when an advertisement on TV spoke of an event   
   > happening at the First Nations University here in Regina.   
   >   
   > It's abbreviated name is "FNUniv", and the guy speaking called it "F   
   > N univ", which sound exactly like 'eff'n univ'.   
      
   Back in about 1980 the federal government here forced a lot of mergers   
   between tertiary institutions [1]. The claim was that larger   
   institutions were more cost-efficient, when all the evidence showed the   
   very opposite. It caused a lot of misery and was strongly opposed by the   
   institutions themselves, but it was pushed through anyway.   
      
   For a little while, it seemed that the amalgamated mess in northern NSW   
   was going to be called the Combined University of the Northern   
   Tablelands, but somebody noticed in time to change the name.   
      
   [1] At the time, I predicted that it would take fifty years to undo the   
   damage. I was wrong. The fifty years is nearly up, and the changes are   
   now irreversible. Morale in my own university is terrible; in hindsight,   
   I'm lucky to be out of it.   
      
   --   
   Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org   
   Newcastle, NSW   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)