I used to work in the Publications office at BU; and when someone says that it took "a year and a half", it wasn't 18 months of solid deliberation at $200/hr. With about two dozen trustees meeting once per year, plus the University administration volleying emails back and forth with the design firm; it probably was about four or five design iterations to get to the current one.

The former logo was created at least a decade ago; before really good web design software and HD monitors and video podcasts - as long as they were updating the logo to make it compatible across many platforms, they may as well update it as well to make it useful and consistent with the 20 or so schools at BU, who all want to be special and do their own thing, even though they all fall under the BU name.

Like it or not, branding of a school is big business, when you're trying to attract people into handing over $100K+ to attend.