HIGHER EDUCATION DISCOURSE: CHANGES IN THE USE OF VERBAL AND VISUAL DEVICES IN CROATIAN UNIVERSITY SELF-PRESENTATION

Abstract

In this paper, we wanted to establish whether the higher education discourse in Croatia has shifted from the practice of self-presenting and foregrounding the quality of universities and positioning them within society, to new discursive practices with language devices used in marketing or advertising industries targeted at prospective students, with a view of persuading them to buy a certain service. As stated in Osman, the role of a university used to be educating and forming knowledgeable people and thinkers who would help change the world. However, this role started to change towards the end of the 20th century, especially in Western countries, as their governments gradually reduced financing for public universities, which forced these institutions to find other sources of income. Therefore, a different approach toward prospective students was required. This research and its results have demonstrated that, over the years, the University of Split has changed not only the mode of presenting information but also the mode of self-promotion in order to shape its public role and to attract students and, in so doing, increase its financial means. Its academic merits, its roles in setting scientific or artistic standards, or in providing a critique of social, economic or political processes were disregarded or ignored, in favour of a new identity as a service provider packaging education with new life experiences. At both levels, the verbal and the visual, the University was no longer represented as an academic institution which controlled processes and people. The results also showed that it had turned to a more pronounced use of a promotional discourse and the discursive practice of marketing, while simultaneously reducing the informativeness of its prospectuses. However, we cannot say that the University in question was engaged in serious marketization, especially when we compare our study with the results obtained by other researchers, who have elaborated on various significant promotional discursive practices at the universities they studied, some of which even function as enterprises. However, the trend is noticeable. Fairclough’s claim that discourse and society are inextricably intertwined is here confirmed, as social change has been reflected in the semiotic representations of academic institutions. These discourse shifts, which are interdiscursive examples of promotional activities, could impact on the professional role of universities in society and mark the beginning of a more extensive higher education marketization and consequently, of the use of market-oriented discursive practices.