우리나라 대학홍보의 현황과 방향 - 대학홍보실의 구조와 기능을 중심으로

Abstract

본 논문은 우리 나라 대학 홍보의 현황을 홍보실의 구조, 구성, 그리고 업무를 중심으로 정리하고 있다. 또한 대학에서 집행하는 매체전략에 대해서도 상세한 분석을 하고 있다. Recently, the area of university PR received fair amount of interests from both academian and practitioners as Korean universities witnessed the trend that applicants to universities are consistently reduced. Hence, this study made an endeavor to understand the growing interests on university PR from a marketing communication perspective. In particular, this research focuses on the structure and functions of university PR offices since, in spite of their importance in implementing university PR, there is a paucity of empirical data on this subject. Employing a mail survey method towards the university PR officers, this study found the following facts. First of all, the present survey revealed several demographic characteristics of university PR officers. Among others, it is observed that most of university PR officers lack marketing and journalism experiences, which are of value to their daily routine tasks. Secondly, the structural features of university PR office were also examined. It is found that university PR office had many different names, and belonged to many different divisions. In addition, surprisingly, quite a few Korean universities were outsourcing their advertising and public relations tasks to outside agencies. Thirdly, university PR offices were performing mostly basic communication skills level tasks, such as writing publicity materials. Hardly found were advanced public relations tasks, such as relationship management with important constituencies of university. Fourth, the overall job satisfaction level of university PR officers was high enough, except the area of monetary compensations. Subsequent regression analysis found that male officers with long tenure were most likely satisfied to their job. Finally, respondents perceived newspaper as the most important medium for both university advertising and public relations. However, local universities tended to put more value on the broadcast media, as compared to their counterparts in the capital-area universities. Besides, the rapidly growing use of internet as communication medium is observed. Based on the above findings regarding the current status of university PR in Korea, several suggestions were made to improve university PR functions. It is emphasized that university PR becomes one of core functions of university, and should be treated in such a fashion.