Higher Education Branding through Instrumental Values

Abstract

Due to the complexity of the educational market, changes are also occurring in the field of education itself - from the constant transformation of the curriculum to new trends in the management of education at all levels. Faculties compete with each other for the best students, professors, projects, discoveries and resources. This forces higher education institutions, which want to survive in the long term and to be highly listed on the market, to take special care of their reputation and prestige. In order to improve their quality and thereby ensure a competitive advantage, higher education institutions use brand management activities to emphasize the values on which their engagement is based. The aim of the paper is to investigate the opinion of students - users of the service of a higher education institution and to show the importance of instrumental values on the basis of which the faculty brand should be shaped. Descriptive statistics and survey techniques were used in the empirical research, and the sample consisted of 403 respondents - students at six private and state faculties. The obtained results indicate a positive opinion of the respondents about instrumental values, such as those on which a higher education institution should build its brand. This finding provides a basis for the creators of not only higher education brands, but also for the creation of study programs based on the estimated value, an incentive for further research of other values in higher education, as well as for the creation of an optimal brand model of higher education institutions.