With increased competition for talented students and academic staff, many universities have recognised the importance of brand building to better position in the field. This study selected a recently founded public university in China as the case to explore in what way a young university's brand is constructed and to what extent such a brand is…

This paper examines the mechanisms through which higher education institutions (HEIs) explore, focusing on organizational status and institutional logic. We hypothesize that the exploration mechanisms differ depending on the public and private sectors. Revisiting middle-status conformity, we assert that the U-shaped relationship is stronger for…

A dominant narrative exists that all regional public universities (RPUs) are striving for prestige and, if given the chance, would readily abandon their missions of facilitating educational access for marginalized students and increase admissions selectivity to privilege elite students. As a result of this dominant narrative, RPUs are largely…

The purpose of this study is to understand the factors affecting a university's image and students' supportive attitudes. To this end, we have developed a new model, named the 4Q Model. Previous studies have already proposed a number of factors affecting university image. However, in this study, we simplified the factors into four main titles…

U.S. public master's institutions (PMIs) face conflicting imperatives to strive for prestige while democratizing college access for racially minoritized students. By elevating the former over the latter, critics note, these campuses may emulate their world-class peers for legitimacy and resources. Consequently, the dominant perspective links…

Social media technologies (SMTs), online brand communities, and social customer relationship management (SCRM) Capabilities play an indispensable role in the engagement and loyalty-building of university students to achieve a sustainable university reputation. This study provides pioneering input for higher education institutions (HEIs) by…

This research conducted a combined bibliometric and scholastic analysis for characterizing and assessing rectors' academic performance and scholarly impact at public universities in Indonesia. This bibliometric study evaluated the academic performance of 82 rectors of public universities in Indonesia from 93 initial candidates, focusing on 2706…

This research looks at higher education choice through the lens of extended self in consumer behavior. An online survey at two US universities, one public and one private, found that extended-self moderated how much fulfillment of self-image needs led students to like a university. Self-esteem needs were a critical part of this process, positively…

Purpose: State funding is being reduced for higher education institutes (HEIs) is linked to several checks such as performance-based incentives (Hagood, 2019). This forces HEIs to look for other options for funding. Endowment funds are now becoming the main source of revenue for HEIs (Sörlin, 2007), largely provided by alumni. Thus, this study…

This collection of short essays presents and examines six vignettes of organisational change in British, New Zealand and European universities. Drawing on the social studies of economisation literature, formal research projects and auto-ethnographic insights, the authors detail profound changes in how knowledge is produced in universities. They…

Public universities have assumed business-minded practices and norms that more closely align with goals and values of corporations than social institutions charged with creating and disseminating knowledge. One pervasive cost-savings strategy is the outsourcing of instruction to a contingent workforce. This case study explores the experiences of…

While academic capitalism pervades many facets of US higher education, this study analyzes paid adwords as a method of academic capitalism in the online marketplace. This article presents findings from a five-month quantitative analysis of paid adwords of the 2018 top "US News & World Report" top 100 national universities. Capturing…

Purpose: Personal branding is a strategic tool of marketing and communication to define success in organisations. While it constitutes a conscious attempt to commodify self and audit self, it must be intentionally managed to obtain its optimum results. This study aims to illustrate how personal branding may also pose unintentional and unconscious…

Many regional public universities (RPUs) provide college access to diverse groups of undergraduate students and face pressures to pursue prestige in the academic hierarchy. Prior research posits that RPUs will strive for prestige because of status- and resource-based rewards that flow from increasing their admissions selectivity,…

The current exploratory study determined the prevalence of the sport management academic degree being offered in top-ranked institutions as based on "U.S. News & World Report" rankings. A focus on the differences of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees being offered, or not offered, was placed on national universities and…