Using a relational approach to retaining students and building mutually beneficial student‐university relationships

Abstract

The practice of public relations at most universities has been relegated to a single office concerned primarily with managing institutional reputation. When public relations is conceptualized as relationship management, however, the role of public relations is expanded to include a campus‐wide approach to initiating, developing, and maintaining relationships with key public members who can affect the institution economically, socially, politically, and culturally. In the current investigation, 164 students were surveyed to determine whether student‐university relationship attitudes differentiated those who indicated they were planning on returning to the institution from those who were not or were undecided. Respondent student‐university relationship attitudes were measured using the Bruning and Ledingham (1999) organization‐public relationship scale, which examines the respondent's personal, professional, and community relationship attitudes. Also, focus groups were conducted to define student‐university personal, professional, and community relationships. The results showed that community relationships were strongly related to the criterion and personal and professional relationships were substantially related. Implications of these findings for the practice of public relations, suggestions for managing student‐faculty relationships, and limitations to the investigation are discussed.