An Analysis of Top 500 Webometrics Universities’ Slogans with a Specific Focus on Asian Universities

Abstract

Universities employ various positioning strategies to attract prospective students and academic staff. While some universities publicize their distinctive features via introductory videos, showing facilities and prioritizing academic success, some universities refer to slogans. Although slogans have been studied in different disciplines, they deserve closer attention in the context of higher education. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the slogans of the top 500 universities included in the Webometrics and compare the emerging themes in the slogans of Asian universities and the other continental universities. In the distribution of universities by continents, the highest distribution share belongs to Europe while the lowest distribution share belongs to Africa. As for the Asian universities, it was found out that 78 universities were on the list. There were seven themes with 224 occurrences in the Asian universities’ slogans with science (n=57, %25.4), activism (n=48, %21.4), comprehensiveness (n=41, %18.3), faith (n=36, %16.1), idealism (n=22, %9.8), comparison (n=14, %6.3), collaboration (n=6, %2.7). As for the other continents, there were seven themes with 949 occurrences with science (n=213, %22.4), activism (n=211, %22.2), faith (n=165, %17.4), comparison (n=162, %17.2), comprehensiveness (n=128, %13.5), idealism (n=50, %5.2), collaboration (n=20, %2.1). The results offered some similarities and differences in the emerging themes of the university slogans among the Asian and the other continent universities. In conclusion, this study added a new dimension to the study of slogans from higher education perspective and demonstrated the importance of slogans for higher education institutions as a positioning strategy. Finally, the findings of this study are thought to offer new paths for higher education institutions to refer to slogans more in order to be recognized at national/international arena, ensure togetherness and foreground distinctive features for the benefit of stakeholders.