An Alternative Approach to Measuring University Reputation

Abstract

Competition among universities has existed for many decades, with universities now under intense scrutiny due to increased marketisation with perceptions of their reputation becoming ever more important to remain competitive. Current measures of university reputation, such as league table rankings, focus predominantly on student achievement and research success. However, these measures do not consider perceptions from these institutions’ diverse range of stakeholders. Measuring reputation from multiple stakeholders and multiple areas of organisations has previously been done in for-profit organisations using the RepTrak™ model. Nevertheless, the characteristics used in this model have not been tested for their applicability to measure University reputation within the United Kingdom, presenting an opportunity measure and understand university reputation from alternative globally accepted criteria. Data were collected through online questionnaires that received 594 responses, and analysed using Exploratory, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis. This research confirms characteristics used in the RepTrak™ model are also applicable to measuring a university’s reputation, offering a clearer measure of university reputation from multiple stakeholder groups. Key findings identified differing perceptions of the importance of measured characteristics by internal and external stakeholders, with ‘performance’ and ‘products and services’ perceived as the most important, respectively. These findings provide clear evidence for the need to tailor marketing and PR communications to different audiences to maximise opportunities for improving perceptions of a university’s reputation.