PORTLAND – The University of Southern Maine has 58 logos and newsletter mastheads used by various segments across campus. The best-known image features the letters “USM” stacked sideways.

Soon it will have just one.

USM officials are introducing a new university logo – a gold icon that resembles both a flame and the base of a pillar – in hopes of helping the school compete for students and funding in the increasingly competitive world of higher education.

The logo is part of a broader campaign aimed at ensuring that the institution’s communications are as consistent and effective as possible. USM President Richard Pattenaude unveiled the logo Thursday at his annual breakfast meeting with the entire faculty and staff.

“This is not just about public relations,” Pattenaude said, “but how you use limited resources to increase the visibility of the university and enhance people’s confidence in it.”

The logo marks the arrival of branding – a technique that corporations use to shape their public images – to the university.

Academia generally has been slow to the idea of branding. But there is growing acceptance of the practice, in part driven by the understanding that undergraduate education has become “commodified,” according to Robert Moore, president of Lipman Hearne, a Chicago firm that provides marketing services to nonprofit groups nationally.

Moore recently wrote in an essay that most students see their education in terms of what it offers in financial, rather than philosophical, rewards, and will pay a premium to be associated with a name brand.

Elite institutions such as Harvard don’t have to worry so much about their image, Moore believes. But image is crucial for midlevel universities that compete with name-brand institutions for traditional students and local two-year colleges for older students.

That’s the position of USM, which faces competition from the freshly branded Southern Maine Community College as well as major four-year universities. Moreover, Pattenaude said, higher education will become increasingly competitive as the number of college-age people in Maine begins declining.

The logo effort began in October 2001, when USM hired Critical Insights, a Portland market research firm, to interview 100 community leaders and conduct a telephone poll to assess how people in Maine’s five southern counties perceive USM.