UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE IMAGE: STUDENT PERCEPTIONS

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the image of universities and colleges in student perceptions and to identify determinant factors of college and university image.

The literature analysis reviews the concept of a corporate image, its formation and models of corporate image management process. It also presents the peculiarities of the higher education institution image, and emphasizes main factors describing the higher education institution image. The part includes the statistics of higher education institutions in Lithuania, the analysis of current Lithuania‘s higher education institution ranking system and premises of researches on university and college image.

Following the literature analysis the research of college and university image in student perception was carried out. The research was conducted within three groups: college students, university students and after-college university students. The questionnaire was designed according to the main factors describing the image of the higher education institution, identified in literature analysis. Research results showed that the overall image of university is more favourable than the overall image of college. It also indicated that the previous experience in college influences the evaluation of university image. The research revealed that the main determinant factor of college image is college prestige, and the main determinant factor of university image is the quality of teaching. The determinant factors of college and university image were presented in the graphical model. According to research results recommendations for colleges and universities attaining the favourable image in student perceptions were given.