Abstract:

In several countries of Central Europe we have observed a demographic decrease of the number of the secondary school graduates applying for a university study. The traditional working positions without the necessity of a university education required by the labour market have almost ceased to exist and majority of the students want to continue at a university. The Slovak Republic as a Central European country with 5.5 million inhabitants has several specifics in this area. There are 20 public universities, then 3 state and eleven private ones. Almost 30 % of the secondary school graduates continue their study at a university abroad and during recent years the Slovak universities have started competing with each in addressing the applicants. The result is the utilisation of different marketing tools by the university institutions through which the secondary school students are addressed. There are Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and many others. It is a complicated process to measure their impacts, however, there are certain methods that are effective and are able to address the current generation of the secondary school students better than other ones. The Faculty of Security Engineering at the University of Žilina had to start a new marketing strategy and the individual tools and their effectiveness are regularly assessed. This article comprises the results of the investigations and detections of the measurable indicators aimed at assessing the faculty and its study programmes from the point of view of the applicants for the reason of identifying the most effective tools for the marketing communication.

Keywords:

Secondary school, university, marketing tools, students, indicators.