How Korean universities portray themselves in the global marketplace: text-mining analysis of university president's messages

Purpose>This study aims to examine university president's messages (PMs) on Korean university websites to analyze how Korean universities present their image and position themselves in the global marketplace.Design/methodology/approach>Assuming that visions, missions and strategies might...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian education and development studies 2022-06, Vol.11 (3), p.417-430
Main Authors: Soo Jeung Lee, Park, Soowon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Author productivity
Citation indexes
College Administration
College presidents
Colleges & universities
Competition
Data mining
Education
Foreign students
Globalization
Higher education
Leadership
Marketing
Outcomes of Education
Social change
Strategic planning
Universities
University presidents
Websites
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Summary:Purpose>This study aims to examine university president's messages (PMs) on Korean university websites to analyze how Korean universities present their image and position themselves in the global marketplace.Design/methodology/approach>Assuming that visions, missions and strategies might vary depending on the characteristics of a university, the study analyzed PMs according to university type: research, teaching and technology. The authors applied text analysis to 105 Korean universities' PMs to understand the images they project. The authors also used text mining on the PMs to examine the frequencies of keywords, to create word clouds, to investigate the keywords' degrees of centrality and to conduct sentiment analysis.Findings>The findings show that Korean universities' PMs project hybrid images, simultaneously portraying the universities as public institutes that produce public goods and as globally competitive strategic actors. In addition, while Korean university PMs explicitly position the universities as education-oriented, they nonetheless reveal that the universities pursue both research-oriented and education-oriented goals.Originality/value>This is the study to examine PMs using text mining with Python to extract information and reveal hidden meanings regarding how universities portray themselves on their websites. Highlighting current challenges faced by universities, this article argues for continued discussion on their societal roles and their strategies for positioning themselves in today's globalized and marketized higher education environment.
ISSN:2046-3162
2046-3170
DOI:10.1108/AEDS-12-2020-0287