<p>I saw that too. It made me think of two things immediately:</p>
<p>1) Massive gifts / donations to the likes of Wharton (who founded the b-school), Harvard and Stanford would never get them to change their names. I remember reading about Phil Knight’s $100m donation to Stanford GSB (then the highest donation ever to a b-school) which managed to get his name on the Knight Management Center – but that’s it – i.e. the name brand values of Harvard and Stanford and Wharton are way more valuable than any single donation could ever overtake (in fact IIRC at the time of the Knight donation, a senior Stanford administrator said as much).</p>
<p>here is an excerpt from BusinessWeek on its story:</p>
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<p>But as I mentioned earlier, Wharton doesn’t count since Joseph Wharton actually founded the school.</p>
<p>2) This guy Booth, although undoubtedly very wealthy and very generous, is frankly totally full of himself to agree (or more likely demand) that the whole business school be renamed to his namesake – I mean come on, people will try and say “oh he probably didn’t demand it, they are just honoring him” but let’s face it when you give a school $300 million bucks, your name is going to be talked about and you have plenty of leverage to say “yes” or “no” about how you are to be honored (in every imaginable way possible, to what degree, to what extent, etc., etc… i.e. the school, trustees, etc. are going to be falling all over themselves to make the guy happy). A truly humble dude would say, “yeah, a building or something would be nice” but to agree (or more likely demand – though the UofC would never, ever admit it) to have the entire school be renamed Chicago Booth… I don’t know man, the guy is a total egomaniac IMO.</p>