My old university where I went to business school in Portugal decided to change its name from "Universidade Nova de Lisboa - Faculdade de Economia" to Nova School of Business and Economics (http://www.novasbe.pt/).
My friend was saying he did not agree with this move, as changing the Portuguese name to the English name does not add quality to the institution, and therefore it is not very likely to attract many more students or become more international per se.
I disagree.
Even though universities definitely need to keep up with its international quality and reputation for research - that is a given - I think it is also important for them to keep up and compete with the marketing strategies of other international business schools.
As the world becomes global, students will no longer look at frontiers to get the best education they can, and with the government funding to universities decreasing, it is important to develop a coherent and strong international brand to attract more and mainly the best students.
In the end, it is always about the marketing, and when people remember the brand name, the marketing strategy has already worked - this is where the name change might be handy.
However the main end of marketing is sales, so once the name is remembered, the second phase of the work is the hardest, to keep up with the quality and international reputation - this is where my friend was right.
PS: I also think there is something more professional and reliable when you call yourself "Business School" rather than Faculty of Economics or School of Management, or anything else. However, this can only happen if at the same time the reputation of the school has enough quality to be seen as such, otherwise I believe it has the opposite effect, and might become even ridiculous.
