The perception of a university’s brand within the recruitment pool for future students (Case survey for the economic higher education)

The brand of a university is the result of the interaction between the vectors it uses to position itself in relation to its stakeholders. Among these, high school students who aspire to become students play a key role. The way in which the university is perceived by its main recruitment base (the high school environment) is crucial for the capacity of the university to recruit the best qualified candidates. Considering there is a lack of a coherent project by either the higher education system or the secondary education system that looks into the high school students’ choice of an educational trajectory, there is a need for in-depth research about the motivational mechanism that drives future students to opt for a certain university. In order to fill this gap, the present study aims to research the vectors that drive the high school students’ choice of a university programme. It is a quantitative, sample research conducted on high school students in the last year of their programme, in representative high schools in one of the districts of Bucharest. The method used is the survey, the technique is that of face-to-face interviews, and the instrument used was the semi-structured questionnaire. The second research is an exploratory qualitative study conducted on the class tutors of the high school students; its purpose is to describe, with the help of some hypotheses, their preoccupations throughout the pedagogical process of career orientation. By changing the perception of the academic environment, this can help promote social cohesion and a synergy between the processes of accumulating knowledge and those of stimulating creativity and innovation in the university environment. The present study aims to contribute to this project and is based on the literature that reflects the experience of some of the most important schools in the international context, as far as the recruitment of future students is concerned.