this medicine friend of mine is devastated that some rich egoistic guy donated a 100mil to nus and med fac is renamed after him: yong loo lin school of medicine. now his 'trashy education' (quote him) has a trashy name to match.

what is it about naming a school/award/building etc after a person's name? isn't it only people who have invaluable achievements and contributions in history have this kinda things named after them? like Nobel Prize, or the Oscar (whom i remember as someone's uncle). so, since today money can buy you anything, just throw in a lump sum and likelihood is you will have the name of a school under your belt and if the school does well, you will be famous. of course there is always a risk to take. what if the school sucks? woohoohoohoo... just bought yourself a bad reputation. therefore, nus medical school costs 100 million. they have just established their price. if this yong loo lin guy is willing to settle for some lower grade college he probably need to only spend 10% of that. somehow it sounds to be like high class prostitution and street hooker.

nus always does this. look at how many names do we have here. HSSM library. Yew Siew Toh conservatory of music, C J Koh law library, dun forget the place i m staying in, kouk foundation house. have i missed out any?

you would say, hey what's wrong with that? he make monetary contribution so as a gesture of appreciation something is named after him. fair enough. the thing i m thinking about here is about branding. people come to nus medical school because it is well known (how well known i m not sure, haha but if it's not that well established i think the yong loo lin guy is wasting his money then). but now it sounds like a private institution that provides no recognized formal education. to establish this name again, i would think some time is needed. i dun haf any examples here but i would say some schools do not change their names for whoever's sake, because their name is the most valuable asset.

well let's just hope the donor doesn't go bankrupt or get involved in some scandal else nus med fac graduates will be referred to students from that scandalous name faculty.