Organizational ımage perceptions of higher education students

Abstract

Colleges and universities rely on their image to attract new members. Organizational image is the total of thoughts, emotions and perceptions resulting from clear conclusions of information formed in the minds of stakeholders as a result of communication with the institution about that institution and its elements. The purpose of this study is to determine if the organizational image of university changes according to the gender, programme, academic achievement and socio cultural activities based on the opinions of the students at Education Faculty. The method is a descriptive model research as it measures organizational image of the participants of the research in a specific moment. The population of the study consisted of a total of 5660 students in the spring semester of the 2013-2014 academic year. The sample of the study was 3850 (%68) students studying at the Education Faculty of Uludag University, chosen by random sampling. The instrument was composed of two sections, included the Personal Information Form that was prepared to collect personal data and second section included 60 items aiming to determine the university's organizational image perception. ANOVA, Mann Whitney- U and Kruskall Wallis were used for the data analysis. The organizational image perceptions were varied according to the gender, programme, socio cultural activities and academic success levels of students at each subscale. The organizational image level of the university was “moderate” (X=2.62; sd=0,56) according to education faculty students’ perceptions. The students perceived the “general view and physical infrastructure” (X=2.15) and provided services (X=2.45) at very low level. However “educational quality” (X=2.78) and “social responsibility” (X=3.15) at moderate level. When gender and academic success was taken into consideration, there was not any significant difference between students' organizational image perceptions. However for programme and socio cultural activities meaningful significant difference was found. According to the results obtained, in order to upgrade organizational image perceptions of education faculty students, univerity management is required to take the necessary measures