Contemporary Challenges in Branding and New Media
Gheorghe-Ilie FÂRTE
“Al.I. Cuza” University of Iaşi (Romania)
Marketing Public Relations for Higher Education Institutions∗
Abstract: Traditionally, any true university has “the honor and responsibility of consecrating itself without reserve to the cause of truth.” By means of conceptual analysis and factual examples I argue that viability of some higher education institutions can be also correlated, under certain circumstances, with the struggle to become customer-driven providers of educational services. Having a realistic, specific, based on distinctive competences, and motivating mission statement, a university, faculty or department could clearly indicate (a) educational services provided, (b) target audiences, (c) specific learning environment, and (d) the way it interacts with the audiences. Although we are not dealing with an actual market of educational services, we dare to maintain that it is not possible to ensure the viability of a university, faculty, department or study program without carrying out marketing public relations activities. Marketing public relations tools and activities are bound, on the one hand, to meet the clients’ needs profitably for the one who offers (educational) services, and, on the other hand, to produce communicative added value that would consolidate the relation of confidence between the two parties.
Keywords: mixed organization, customer-driven provider, higher education institution, mission statement, learning environment, marketing public relations
The main thesis of my article is that all universities, faculties or departments that offer academic programs in communication sciences (particularly in communication and public relations) have to be engaged in marketing public relations activities, if they want to become and remain viable providers of educational services.
∗ A version of this text was presented at the international conference Image Building and Brand Equity through Integrated Communication, Antwerpen-Ghent, April 15-17, 2008.
In order to support this thesis, I shall attempt to answer the following questions: 1. What kind of social entity is a higher education institution (university or college)? 2. What is the mission of the universities, faculties and departments (especially, public relations departments)?
3. How can this mission be embodied, so that the organization which assumes it might be considered viable? 4. Why does the viability of a university, of a public relations department respectively, depend on the implementation of marketing public relations programs? 5. What are the main applicable marketing public relations activities?
1. The University as a mixed organization
The social agents forming a society might be divided into four categories, depending on the answers given to the following two questions (cf. Whetter & Mackey 2002): (a) To what extent is the entity built from a social point of view, or, in other words, to what extent does the existence of the entity depend on its recognition by others? (b) To what extent does the entity acquire agency or, more precisely, to what extent does the entity prove competence, autonomy and responsibility?
1 To what extent is the entity built from a social point of
COMMUNITIES ORGANIZATIONS
view?
0
INFORMAL GROUPS PERSONS
0 1
To what extent does the entity acquire agency?
Thus, the most relevant social agents are the persons and the organizations, as they have the physical and mental capacity to do something willingly, and they can assume the responsibility for the consequences of the actions performed. At the opposite pole, there are the informal groups and the communities, where we speak of an external locus of authority and responsibility. On the other side, persons and informal groups subsist by themselves, whereas organizations and com- munities are social artifacts which matter only to the extent to which they are acknowledged as such by the rest of society. To give just a simple example, I am a person, Arteveldehogeschool and Plantijnhogeschool are
organizations, the students from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi which are present at Arteveldehogeschool constitute an informal group, and the nomad gypsies in Moldova form a community.
The organizations par excellence, the institutions of higher education are situated on different coordinates at the meeting point of three social spheres: the political sphere, the economic sphere and the community sphere. According to their unique position within the common ground of the three spheres, each university, faculty or department balances dif- ferently the political, the economic and the community spheres of all its activities.
The political-economic-community distinction is based on three differentiation criteria: (a) the regulatory principle, (b) the systemic resource, that is, the resource ensuring the success within that particular sphere, and (c) the type of feedback (cf diZerega 2004). Thus, within the political sphere, the regulatory principle is the state, the systemic resource is law, and the feedback is given by gratifications and sanctions. Within the economic sphere, the regulatory principle is the market, the systemic resource is money, and the feedback is given by the profit-loss ratio.
Finally, in the community sphere, the regulatory principle is tradition, the systemic resource is free aid, and the feedback is shown through either the integration, or the isolation of that particular organization. For instance, the activities of the Vlaams Belang party are prevalently political, those of the Telenet Company are prevalently economic, and those of the Volens non-governmental organization are prevalently community activities. One should notice the differences regarding the proportion between the political, economic and community dimensions within the same category of organizations, or within the organization itself. For example, the political dimension is stronger in the case of Romanian (either public or private) universities founded after December 1989, in centers without an academic tradition and without sufficient financial and human resources, than in the case of universities from certain cities which have developed a tradition in this sense, such as Iasi, Bucharest and Cluj. At Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, the Department of Communication Sciences and Public Relations is more of a customer-driven entity than the Department of Philosophy. Moreover, I am certain that Arteveldehogeschool is better integrated in the local community than Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, and, therefore, proves to be a better neighbour. I have used the term prevalence, due to the fact that no organization develops one-dimensional activities, exclusively political, economic or community-oriented.
The differing proportion of the political, economic, and community ingredients is associated to three hypostases of a person or organization:
homo politicus (ruler-governed), homo economicus (producer-customer), homo reciprocans (neighbour-neighbour) respectively. The changes made at the level of these assumed hypostases determines at the level of social agents (either persons of organizations), different ways of evaluating the situations, of taking decisions and of implementing the drafted action programs. For example, as a homo reciprocans, I did not sell my old car to my brother-in-law; I just gave it to him as a gift. On the other hand, as a homo economicus, I bargained at the market to get the best possible price for a kilo of potatoes.
In order to understand more clearly the role of higher education institutions in the life of a society, one should bear in mind another distinction: the one between the public and the private spheres.
Grosso modo, the public sphere has four features: 1. openness, 2. transparency, 3. external assessment, and 4. external control; a social agent is placed within this sphere only if it is ready to recognize four corresponding rights which his peers have: 1’. the right to participate, 2’. the right to be informed, 3’. the right to evaluate the actions taken, and 4’. the right to control (to a certain extent, according to the circumstances) the course of events. For example, the activities performed by a university rector have a clear public dimension, to the extent to which he 1’’. cannot arbitrarily block other persons’ (especially journalists) access within the perimeter of the institution he governs, 2’’ has the duty to give the persons, organizations, or institutions with which he interacts certain fundamental information (regarding the university structure, the number and quality of the teaching staff, the financial resources available, as well as the way in which they are being used, the quota of salary expenses, the educational, research and relaxation areas available, etc.), 3’’. allows himself to be assessed and evaluated by regular citizens, opinion leaders, non-governmental organizations, legal institutions, etc. (based on political, legal, performance criteria, etc.), and 4’’. acts within the boundaries required by certain legal, professional, moral constraints.
Situated in a contradictory position in relation to the public sphere, the private one is characterized by: 1. closure, 2. opacity, 3. self-evaluation, and 4. self-control. More precisely, a person or an organization is situated within the private sphere, if and only if it benefits from the following rights in relation to its peers: 1’ the right to forbid without motivation other persons’ presence, 2’ the right to hide certain information, 3’. the right to have opinions according to one’s own criteria, and 4’. the right to
ignore external constraints. For instance, any person within its family home can make use of the characteristics of the private sphere in order to:
1’’ forbid without justification a stranger’s access in one’s residence, 2’’. conceal one’s acts of mercy, 3’’. boast about one’s flap ears, or 4’’. decide according to one’s wishes how long to hold one’s feet in warm water before going to bed.
As in the case of the political-economic-community triad, the public- private distinction is manifested rather under the form of prevalence than under the form of exclusiveness. In any case, the actions of a social agent are partly public and partly private. For example, all of my lectures are prevalently public (as they are governed to a great extent by the standards of openness, transparency, external evaluation and external control), but they also contain certain private aspects, which concern me personally and which should not be speculated in the public sphere: the fact that I am bald, the rhythm of my breath, the blinking of my eyes, certain involuntary face expressions, etc.
I have insisted too much on these distinctions because I think it is highly important to evaluate correctly the proportion of the political, economic and community dimensions, on the one side, and of the private and public dimensions, on the other side, no matter the circumstances, persons, organizations, actions, activities, etc. Naturally, the evaluation could be performed rather by comparative values, than by absolute values.
For example, if we accept associating one of my lecture with the formula (10% P + 30% E + 60% C) / (70% Pb + 30 Pv), which would suggest the prevalence of the community dimension, and of the public one respectively, then the action by which the Romanian minister of education assigns places financed by the state could be associated with the formula (70% P + 10% E + 20% C) / (90% Pb + 10% PV), which would reflect, by comparison, a stronger public dimension, but also an overwhelming political dimension. Likewise, in the medium-term, I would associate the Bachelor’s program Communication and Public Relations within Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi with the formula (5% P + 60%
E + 35% C) / (60% Pb + 40% Pv), because, on the one hand, we believe in the free market as a regulatory principle, and, on the other hand, we are convinced that the university needs to create a learning environment, in which a large part of the activities should be private. Undoubtedly, any university, faculty or department could adopt a different position depending on the two distinctions presented above, just as it could adopt different positions as to the study program they provide.
2. Mission statements of higher education institutions
Higher education institutions do not differentiate themselves only according to the political-economic-community triad and the public- private dyad, but also according to the mission or vision assumed. A mission statement is a statement made by a company, corporation or organization, regarding its raison d’être and intentions. Usually brief, this statement is the central guide governing the organization’s conduct and operating policy for the foreseeable future. Though Murray N. Rothbard’s statement that “the true origin and purpose of public education is not so much education as we think of it, but indoctrination in the civic religion”
(cf. Rockwell Jr. 2012) may seem exaggerated, it is impossible not to notice the imprecision and inconsistency of many of the self-presentations made by the Romanian universities. We have randomly chosen five examples that we present below:
Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca
“Babes-Bolyai University is an academic educational public institution aiming to promote and sustain the development of specific cultural components within the local, regional, national and international community.”
National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
“Despite being pretty young, many of our graduates have been asserting themselves in politics, public administration or in the sector of communication. Many of our academics and researchers are either leaders of the civil society or famous politicians. Both meet each other in analyses, debates, forecasts or achievements that activate new specialized knowledge and promote new development. Polemics are abundant, effective construction is promoted, complacency is avoided, learning and searching for alternatives are permanently practiced.”
University VALAHIA of Targoviste
“University VALAHIA of Târgovişte is concerned with ac- complishing its mission within optimum parameters: quality learning and scientific research, decent learning and living conditions, European academic perspectives.”
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi is the oldest higher education institution in Romania. Since 1860, the university has been carrying on a tradition of excellence and innovation in the fields of education and research. Alexandru Ioan Cuza University became the first
student-centered university in Romania, once the Bologna Process was put into practice. Striving for excellence, the university takes unique initiatives to stimulate research quality, to encourage dynamic and creative education and to attract the best students to academic life.”
University of Bucharest
“The University of Bucharest is one of the leading institutions of higher education in Romania, and enjoys a considerable national and international prestige, acquired over almost 140 years. Its graduates have included many prominent personalities: teachers and researchers at important universities all over the world, members of the Romanian Academy and of similar institutions in other countries, writers, politicians (members of the Romanian Parliament, ministers, prime ministers and presidents), diplomats, high-ranking ecclesiastical figures, etc.”
Generically speaking, all higher education institutions should base their mission on three essential pillars: constitutionalist democracy, free market, and living tradition, striving to shape responsible citizens, efficient producers and reasonable customers, respectively, as well as solicitous persons of high moral standards. But, in order for each university, faculty or department to justify its existence, they should instantiate this generic vision according to the following four criteria: (a) services provided, (b) target audiences, (c) service exchange environment, and (d) the way the bidders of educational services interact with the audiences.
For instance, the specific mission of the Department of Public Relations and Communication Sciences of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi (to which I belong) may have the following formulation: “We offer qualitative services for the formation of professionals in public relations, preponderantly to high school graduates from Moldova and Basarabia (Republic of Moldova), within the oldest university of Romania, treating our stakeholders as customers whose expectations must be exceeded, not only met. Our medium-term objective is to make the most of all the available national and international col- laborations in order to help our regional students become (post)graduates at a European level.”
3. Customer-driven university/ department in a dynamic learning environment
In order to be considered (a) realistic, (b) specific, (c) based on distinctive competences, and (d) motivating, the mission must be correlated with observable properties and planning activities.
The first issue raised by the assumed mission regards the meaning we give to the phrase „qualitative services for the formation of professionals in public relations“. As a rule, there are six modalities of defining the concept of quality, all six being subordinated to the principle: „Quality begins with customer needs and ends with customer satisfaction“ (cf.
Maguad 2007):
• transcendent definition: Quality is something that is intuitively understood but nearly impossible to communicate. We just know it when we see it;
• product-based definition: Quality is found in the components and attributes of a product. The higher the amounts of its characteristics, the higher its quality;
• user-based definition: A product has good quality if the customer is satisfied. Quality is determined by what a customer wants;
• manufacturing-based definition: A product has good quality if it conforms to design specifications.
• value-based definition: A product has good quality if it is perceived as providing good value for the price.
• customer-driven definition: Quality has to be seen as meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
Among these six meanings, two of them may be put under parentheses: the first one, which cannot be checked based on some objective standards, and the third one, if students’ sole desire is just to obtain a degree in public relations. Just as a professional hairstylist must refuse the extravagant request of a woman to crop half of her hair, likewise, educators in public relations must refuse those candidates whose sole interest is to obtain a diploma, and not the knowledge and skills corresponding to it.
In general, the services offered to students in Communication and Public Relations may be considered qualitative only if they are judiciously correlated with specific features, activities, functions and social roles. Among the personal attributes which need to be cultivated, one may mention sociability, tact, excellent memory, presence of mind, promptness in thinking and decision making, analysis and synthesis capacity, organizational skills, objectivity, honesty, correctness, capacity of expression through clear and concise ideas, both in writing and orally, and labour strength. These attributes are necessary in order to carry out the following activities: message writing and editing, initiating and cultivating press relations, investigating aspects regarding the relationship organization-audience within the global context of the social life,
elaborating, implementing and evaluating some programs at the level of the organization’s management, client counseling, especially those clients that have assumed a leadership position, organizing special events which may turn into news, preparing public lectures, creating some com- munication products with the aid of typographic, photographic or multimedia means, professional training for the members of the organization, establishing and maintaining contacts with the persons, groups, and communities that are important for the served organization.
The above-mentioned activities allow the fulfillment of various functions – creating (building on, producing, developing, establishing, changing, guaranteeing) trust, comprehension and sympathy, arousing attention, interest and needs, creating (cultivating, preserving) communication and relationships, creating mutual understanding and agreement, articulating, representing and adjusting interests (harmonizing, adapting and integrating interests), influencing public opinion (forming opinion, creating consciousness, of problems in particular), resolving conflicts (conflict communication) and creating consensus (Nessmann 1995) –, corresponding to well established social roles: account executive, press agent, sales agent, media analyst, market analyst, editorial assistant, insurance counselor, commentator, public affairs counselor, campaign counselor, personal counselor, events planner, copywriter, DJ, broadcaster, announcer, broadcast journalist, documentarian, editorialist, facilitator, press photographer, fund raiser, manager, lobbyist, mediator, motivational speaker, negotiator, news writer, narrator, presenter, PR officer, promoter, barker, spokesperson, receptionist, consumer affairs specialist, telecaster, etc.
The second essential dimension of our mission is to transform the Department of Public Relations and Communication Sciences into a customer-driven entity, and the area of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, into a dynamic learning environment.
The term customer can be defined as the recipient or beneficiary of the outputs of work efforts or the purchaser of products and services. It can be a person, a unit, a department, or an entire organization. Customers have wants, opinions, perceptions, and desires which are often referred to as the voice of the customer.
For any institution of higher education, we may define various categories of clients, internal and external, respectively. Internal customers are people or units that receive goods and services from within the same organization. Their outputs provide inputs to other functions and activities within the organization. External customers are those
individuals or organizations which are not part of the organization in question but are nevertheless impacted by that organization’s activities.
They are the last ones we are trying to satisfy with our work. Our internal customers are Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Philosophy and Socio-Political Sciences, Department of Public Relations and Com- munication Sciences, Students, Teachers, Non-teaching Staff, and Admi- nistrative Staff. The direct external customers include future employers of the students (public institutions and authorities, political parties, companies, public relations or advertising agencies, press institutions, NGOs, etc), other colleges and universities that students attend to continue their education, and suppliers from which our university and faculty receives students, goods, or services. The indirect external customers include governmental bodies, the communities served, accrediting agencies, alumni, and donors.
Obviously, customers of higher education institution differ from typical business customers. For instance, students are admitted selectively (on the ground of certain academic standards), they do not entirely bear the costs of the services received, and they may obtain the final diploma only if they pass all the exams along the academic years. On the market, the sole discrimination is related to the amount of money that the client has at his/her disposal. Anyway, only if we know well our involved stakeholders and if we treat them as clients can we establish an efficient feedback mechanism, capable to assure our viability on the market of educational services in the public relations field.
As regards the creation of a learning environment, I believe that the diminishing of the compulsory, and implicitly, the defensive dimension of the education process is essential. What I find interesting to note is that, most of the times, a purchase-selling action on the market brings satisfaction not only to the seller, but also to the buyer, even though sometimes the price seems onerous. On the contrary, within the political and the educational spheres, the „beneficiaries“ of the undertaken actions are often stressed, anxious and dissatisfied, although these actions are considered intrinsically positive. The creation of a supportive climate within the academic environment seems to depend, on the one hand, on the attenuation of the compulsory nature of the educational activity, and, on the other hand, why not, on the commoditization of higher education.
If ING Direct has managed to offer its clients a comfortable environment for the development of financial transactions, why could not a university become welcoming for the ones who require educational services? If the location of a bank could be arranged as a café, why could not a university
be rebuilt as a cluster of clubs? I believe that learning is much more efficient if the persons involved are not aware of the fact that they are actually learning. As far as I am concerned, I believe that what I have learnt under constraint for 20 years does not represent even a quarter of what I voluntarily learnt within certain stimulating learning environments.
4. To create academic added-value through marketing public relations
It may seem somehow unfitting to speak of the necessity of implementing some marketing public relations programs in the sphere of higher education institutions, especially since we are not dealing with an actual market of educational services. Nonetheless, we dare to maintain that we cannot ensure the viability of a university, faculty, department or study program without carrying out marketing public relations activities.
Firstly, some terminological specifications need to be made.
According to Philip Kotler (1999), marketing occurs when people decide to satisfy their needs and wants through exchange. Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return.
The concept of exchange leads to the concept of a market. A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product. These buyers share a particular need or want that can be satisfied through exchange. Thus, the size of a market depends on the number of people who exhibit the need, have resources to engage in exchange, and are willing to offer these resources in exchange for what they want. So, roughly speaking, marketing is meeting needs profitably or, to be more precise, “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”
However, public relations practice comprises all acts of strategic (non-spontaneous) communication that promote the viability of a social agent in the public sphere, or, to put it more clearly, public relations are the practice of cultivating (communication) relations in the public sphere.
Putting together all these considerations, we might say that marketing public relations activities are bound, on the one hand, to meet the clients’
needs profitably for the one who offers (educational) services, and, on the other hand, to produce communicative added value that would consolidate the relation of confidence between the two parties.
Marketing public relations (MPR) can contribute to the fulfillment of the following objectives (Kotler 2000):
• Build awareness: MPR can place stories in the media to bring attention to a product, service, person, organization, or idea;
• Build credibility (expertise + trustworthiness + likeability): MPR can add credibility by communicating the message in an editorial context;
• Stimulate a sound growth of the school: MPR can contribute to attracting capable and enthusiastic candidates;
• Hold down promotion costs: For example, MPR costs less than media advertising;
• Turn satisfied customers into advocates: Customer databases and profiles can yield satisfied customers who can become role models and spokespeople for the services;
• Influence the influential: The influencer may be an authority figure like a teacher, doctor, or pharmacist, but it can also be someone who has a different kind of one-to-one relationship with the customer, such as a hair stylist or personal trainer.
These objectives can be specified and assumed as goals for programs of action taking, provided that a thorough analysis of the situation is done by giving answers to the following questions, that instantiate general marketing questions (cf. Kotler 1999):
• How can we spot and choose the right educational market segment?
• How can we differentiate our offer?
• How far can we go in customizing our offering for each customer?
• How can we grow our educational offer?
• How can we build stronger brands?
• How can we reduce the cost of customer acquisition and keep customers loyal?
• How can we tell which customers are more important?
• How can we improve our „academic productivity“, both in the field of scientific research and in the learning process?
• How can we manage channel conflict?
• How can we get other departments to be more customer-oriented?
Marketing public relations tools and activities must be (a) attractive, (b) distinctive, and (c) memorable. Some of these are the follow (Kotler 2000):
• news;
• special events (news conferences, press tours, grand openings, firework displays, laser shows, hot-air balloon releases, multimedia presentations, star-studded spectaculars);
• written materials (annual reports, brochures, articles, company newsletters and magazines);
• audiovisual materials (films, slide-and-sound programs, video and audio cassettes);
• corporate-identity materials: logos, stationery, brochures, signs, business forms, business cards, buildings, uniforms, company cars and trucks;
• sponsorship;
• direct experience, provided it is engaging, robust, compelling, and memorable;
• valuable endorsement.
5. Final remarks
Are these MPR objectives, tools and activities applicable and applied by the higher education institutions in Romania, and particularly by the public relations departments? Highly applicable and yet, unfortunately, hardly applied. After the Revolution of December 1989, Romanian higher education experienced an explosive growth through extension. Presently, there are about 100 authorized or accredited Universities in Romania, most of them granting all types of programs of study: undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs. The notable growth of the number of university teaching staff is related to an exponential growth of the number of students. For instance, a single private University in Bucharest (founded after 1990) has a student population of no less than 180 thousand enrolled students. We might say that, in Romania, any graduate with a high school diploma may become a student, and almost any graduate with a Master’s or Doctor’s diploma may become a university teacher. In the field of Communication Science, the situation does not differ significantly. The study programs in Journalism and Public Relations are offered equally in our traditional Universities (Iasi, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca) and in the newly founded (private or public) Universities: Arad, Bacau, Baia-Mare, Brasov, Constanta, Galati, Pitesti, Sibiu, Timisoara, Suceava, etc. The number of students in the Bachelor, Master and Doctor programs is not always made public, probably out of modesty.
Given that the departments of Communication and Public Relations attract thousands of candidates, isn’t the application of marketing public relations strategies superfluous, or at least premature? Absolutely not.
Numerous candidates choose the Public Relations department without
really knowing what it implies (e.g. only a few candidates are acquainted with the negative connotations of the phrase „public relations“ and the correlative phenomenon of escaping the terminology), and others choose PR in order to get a diploma that would recommend them for a job in the public administration field. At present, the staff in the sphere of government is in excess; thus, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many jobs for spokespersons, media relations specialists, media analysts, PR officers will be offered for recruitment through competitive examinations in the next years. Moreover, Romanian economy continues to be poorly financed even though it has been in a permanent process of development in the past 8 years. The deficiencies in the Romanian infrastructure have caused an excessive compression of capital and, therefore, of the chances for the public relations and advertising specialists to find a job in Romania’s capital, Bucharest. Small companies in the province can rarely afford the luxury of creating a budgetary framework that would include PR strategies. Confronted with a striking decrease in the number of candidates and forced to adapt to a flat market, Romanian schools of Public Relations will have to use their own MPR strategies in order to survive.
As far as the Public Relations and Communication Science Department of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi is concerned, we have decided to apply a conservative strategy which suits our human and material available resources as well as our graduates’ opportunities to evolve. The first step consists in applying a de-marketing strategy that would discourage the poorly prepared candidates to apply to our University simply because they want to get a diploma. The second step consists in shaping a dynamic learning environment in which the students will acquire a solid theoretical basis, will gain experience in scientific and market research activity, will store a considerable social capital, and will develop a proactive attitude towards their subsequent evolution. At this stage, we do not intend to attract students from other Romanian regions and still less from abroad. The candidates from the Moldavian region form a sufficiently large target audience. The third step would consist in making programs of student orientation towards a career, according to the aptitudes shown during the educational process. We do not wish to turn our students into a captive audience; on the contrary, we will advise them to go wherever they can further their education and put their knowledge and abilities into practice. First and foremost, for our top students we wish to play the role of a jumping-off ground for public relations schools and important companies in Western Europe. On a short term basis, we
find the asymmetrical exchange “Students for collaborative teachers”
mutually profitable.
Another evidence of the conservative spirit that drives us is the fact that, six years after the registration of the first students in the Communication and Public Relations Bachelor program, we are running a single Master’s program, namely Public Relations and Advertising. In the same cautious manner, the gradual growth in the quality of the services we offer has been correlated with a corresponding growth in visibility.
We always relate to the fundamental and PR objectives specific to our department, and we use MPR tools, within the limits of our available resources, trying to give substance to our motto: „We build professionals!
We get through!“
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