Recently, two phenomena have been discussed in higher education-specific media: (1) the prevalence of institutional mergers to promote longevity; and (2) institutional rebranding to improve public perceptions and increase enrollment through enhanced and/or clarified missions (Wexler 2015). Although such has been reported in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" and "U.S. News and World Report" as recent developments, neither can be considered "new." Throughout the history of American higher education, mergers and renamings have been relatively common, especially given economic crises (Burke 1982; Martin, Samels, and Associates 2009). Although U.S. higher education has existed since the seventeenth-century, statistical analysis of historical data indicates that national/international financial difficulties throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have forced college administrators to consider mergers and institutional rebranding to improve organizational subsistence. In this article, to better understand how external financial constraints influenced colleges and universities, the following narrative recounts nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty first-century crises that correlate with a significant number of college/university mergers/renamings. In addition, examples of institutional mergers and relabelings that occurred during said events are presented for consideration. Afterwards, quantitative methodologies and illustrations related to statistical data are detailed.