The University of Colorado is done with its rebranding campaign, and the final price tag is a staggering $780,000. That’s about the cost of 54 semesters in out-of-state tuition bills (or 780,000 $1 legal payouts for illegally firing Ward Churchill). So what did the university get for all that money? A logo with a gold “C” and “U” in block letters that pretty much looks like the one you’re probably imagining right now. Despite the potential cuts to higher education and the anticipated 9.5 percent rise in average tuition next year, CU officials began the process during the Great Recession of 2008 in order to brand the institution under a single logo, doing away with the various ones that have popped up over the years.

For the record, no tuition money was spent on the project, according to Boulder’s Daily Camera. The money came from the president’s initiative funds: interest earnings on CU’s investments. Still, as Boulder Faculty Assembly chairman Joseph Rosse, a business professor, says, “I think faculty will have significant reservations about the amorphous value of these changes relative to the very real, and substantial, costs of the project.” A spokeswoman for CU explains that the campaign was important, because “in a world where people are bombarded by images and messages, we can’t afford to be fragmented and disconnected in how we present ourselves.”