After extensive (and expensive) market research, Sheffield University has unveiled a new logo.
But despite vice-chancellor Bob Boucher's claim that this will give the institution a "new identity", enabling staff "to express more powerfully what makes us special," many academics have failed to pick up the warm glow. Visitors to the website are now welcomed to "The University Of Sheffield." Jonathan Foster, senior lecturer in Sheffield's Journalism department, rages that decent students will turn their noses up at a university that thinks an "of" should be capitalised and a title should finish with a full-stop. "It's taken us from Russell Group to remedial group," he says. He is equally depressed that the book in the centre of the coat of arms (once plain red, now a "special" sort of blue) has shrunk - "presumably to ease the implied reading burden on students". Rumour has it that Sheffield staff are waiting to hear whether a Burberry baseball cap, worn back to front, will be part of the new uniform for lecturers.