Perception Management: An Active Strategy for Marketing and Delivering Academic Excellence at Liberal Arts Colleges

Abstract

Too many colleges and universities continue to remain archaic in their outdated administrative structures anchored in faculties that are too self-satisfied and too self-centered to take a lead in bringing about mutual accountability systems and behaviors on their respective campuses. More specifically, numerous liberal arts colleges continue to spend too much time looking inward, planning too much from memory rather than from imagination, suffer from faculty hubris and indifference, and do not demonstrate the market sophistication needed to be viable and visible, let alone excellent, in the changed economic world of the past decade. Therefore, in order to accentuate the contextual anchors, communication techniques, practical realities, benchmark comparabilities, sophisticated interdependence, marketing concepts, and mutual accountability required to move beyond mere survival, this article will describe, develop, and delineate “perception management” as a strategic design and action agenda for turning passive reactions into proactive realities at liberal arts colleges in particular and the public sector in general.