Education quality, not name, defines a college

A new wave of "academic" game to change names has been sweeping across China, as about 40 colleges in 13 provinces and municipalities have applied to change their official names. If some of them want to change their names from "college" to "university", others want to enlarge the region they "represent".

A deeper look into the issue will show that this trend has been going on for some years. Data show that from 2011 to 2015, at least 472 State-sponsored colleges, or 23 percent of the total, changed their names. Besides, many colleges changed their names, by adding newer, more popular words or replacing the original words, to signify the majors they offer. An apt example is Beijing Broadcasting Institute, which changed its name to Communication University of China in 2004.

Some colleges had ample reason to change their names, because the new ones better suited the times or their requirements. They might have had new majors and new characteristics that the original names failed to represent. The CUC, for example, had introduced many media-related majors since the late 1990s, which Beijing Broadcasting Institute could no longer signify.