Research On The Image Of Dali University

In the 21st century, the competition among institutes of higher education has in some way shifted from the traditional competition of overall strength based on inner capability, teaching and sci-tech research to the competition of reputation based on social evaluation and public image. It is a must choice for newly established universities, which lack behind in overall strength compared with the time-honored universities, to build good public image and follow a path of their own characteristics in accordance of their place in the hierarchy, their orientation, their unique features and their principles and aims. Only by doing so can they survive in the upcoming competition and develop in a healthy manner.The image of an institute of higher education can mainly be seen as the public recognition and evaluation. Therefore, this research starts off from the perspective of the public and takes reference from the relative literature. The author surveyed both on-campus and outside-campus public opinions and defined four dimensions for evaluating the image of newly established universities, i.e. image of students, image of faculty and staff, environmental image and cultural image. On- and outside-campus questionnaires on the public image of Dali University were made and put through reliability and validity test and given to the related public for feedback. Based on the results of the survey, the paper gives suggestions and strategies for building and promoting the public image of Dali University. The main conclusions of the research are:1. The scores given by the public on the general image and images of various aspects of Dali University range from medium to the low end and there is a discrepancy between the on- and outside-campus groups. The outside-campus group gives higher scores than the on-campus group, among which, the faculty and staff give higher scores than the students.2. The on-campus group's evaluation on Dali University's image is: the environmental image＞the cultural image＞the image of faculty and staff＞the image of students. The outside-campus group's evaluation is: the environmental image＞the image of faculty and staff＞the image of students＞the cultural image. The major discrepancy between the two group's evaluations is in the cultural image. The analysis of comparison shows the discrepancy basically results from a lack of external communication by Dali University.3. The difference between the evaluations of Dali University's image by the faculty and staff and the students is mainly a result of bad internal communication.4. The most outstanding problem for the image building of Dali University is a lack of awareness of proactive communication and ineffective communication.Based on the conclusions of the research, the main suggestions for building and promoting the image of Dali University are:1. Enhancing publicity by simultaneously carrying out image building and image communication;2. Improving the flow of information and communication channels to change the status quo of organizational communication;3. Attaching importance to Internet-based applications and improving the image of website;4. Formulating unique characteristics that can differentiate itself from other newly established universities based on accurate orientation;5. Gradually establishing a complete system of image recognition.The innovation of the research rests with the adoption of demonstration to systematically analyze the image of newly established universities from the perspective of the public-the receivers of the image. The research will not only enrich the study of images of institutes of higher education but also serve as an exploration and attempt to conduct quantitative research on organizational image.