Date Awarded

1986

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Department

Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which colleges and universities that have changed significantly have taken a planned approach to marketing their institutions through their external communications. "Changed image" institutions are defined as those degree-granting institutions that have changed name, sex status, or number of years of instruction offered within the past two decades since 1966. The sample contained six public and six private institutions--two public and two private institutions in each category.;Publications of various divisions of the institutions were analyzed for consistency of image presentation. Commercially published college guides were consulted for accuracy of descriptions of sample institutions. Site visits were conducted where persons representing various functional areas of the institutions studied were interviewed.;A guidance counselor survey was conducted in which counselors were asked to identify the list of colleges and universities as public or private, single-sex or coeducational, two- or four-year. Each institution was also rated on its attempts to inform counselors of changes, improvements in quality as perceived by counselors, and effectiveness of communications efforts.;Based on four measures of consistency: publication analysis, personal interviews, internal image perception analysis, and guidance counselor survey results, no institution rated high on all measures. However, all of the gender-change institutions rated high on three measures. All of the year-change institutions rated high on two of the consistency measures. The four name-change institutions scored sporadically on the various consistency indicators. A major consideration in effectiveness of these institutions' attempts to communicate a changed image is the amount of time elapsed since the change. The gender changes occurred earliest of those changes in the sample. The year changes were more recent than the gender changes while the majority of the name changes were most recent.;This study concludes that evidence of a high degree of marketing planning is in existence in the sample institutions. With one-third of the sample rating high on 75 percent of the consistency measures and another third rating high on 50 percent, a fair conclusion is that marketing planning is an important consideration for administrators in higher education today.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-49bn-w769

Rights

© The Author

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