im from sim-uol and i think its quite obvious that if you see someone who states university of london in his resume esp in sg , 98% chance is that he is from sim. i'll persolly just say im from sim, if someone probes further, i'll say i took the uol programme.
however when you say you've always respected friends who openly admit they did a course in sim, what do you mean? you're basically just saying that u love people to say "yeah, i came from sim and my uol cert is from there. it just happened to sound better than it should. but don't worry i'll just emphasize its distance learning so i won't come across as trying to mask the fact that i studied in sim or im from uol or
lse. but wait, thats actually the cert that i am holding and some people just refuse to acknowledge that its a product of our hard work and earned by merit"